McDermid, Val

(British, 1955– )

Val McDermid grew up in a Scottish mining community and read English at Oxford before working as a journalist. She has written two crime series which feature female protagonists; the Kate Brannigan novels, set in Manchester, are characterized by a witty and engaging style and the Lindsay Gordon novels feature the first ‘out’ British lesbian detective. McDermid has also published chilling, graphic, psychological thrillers pitting the policeman Tony Hill and his team against serial killers. In the award-winning The Mermaids Singing (1995) someone is killing gay men, and in Wire in the Blood (1997) Hill's National Profiling Task Force is asked to identify any sinister link between the disappearances of young girls. His colleague Shaz Bowman has a hunch as to the killer's identity but it seems so far-fetched that she is ridiculed, at great cost to herself and the success of the investigation.

Patricia Cornwell, Sandra Scoppettone, Linda Barnes. See CRIME  CS