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Val McDermid was born in Scotland, and now lives in Manchester. She read English at St Hillda’s College Oxford, and was a journalist for sixteen years, but is now a full-time writer. In 1995 she won the CWA Gold Dagger award for the best crime novel of the year with The Mermaids Singing and was short listed in 1999 for the CWA Gold dagger awards for A Place of Execution. One of the most talented writers, she has written three series

1. Ayo What was the very first mystery/ fiction book that you read?
   Val: I can’t remember which children’s mystery I read first – it must have been Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys or one of Jane Shaw’s Susan books. But the first proper mystery I read was Agatha Christie’s The Murder at the Vicarage.
2. Ayo: What made you decide to write mystery fiction?
   Val: I had always wanted to be a storyteller, but my first attempts at writing literary fiction were a disaster. Maybe because I started too young, I don’t know. But I’d always read and enjoyed crime fiction, right across the spectrum, and the defining moment for me was reading Sara Paretsky’s first
   V I Warshawski novel, Indemnity Only. Here was someone writing something I’d never seen before – a mystery with an urban setting that dealt with contemporary women’s lives, that didn’t shy away from engaging with the politics of the society it reflected and that was fun. I knew I’d found the right niche for my own imagination then and there.
3. Ayo: Who were your influences when you decided to start writing in general? Do other books still influence your writing and if so, what other types of writing are you attracted to?
   Val: It’s probably easier for other people to identify influences in my work than it is for me, since none of us likes to think we’re aping other writers! But writers who were important to me as a reader thinking about writing were as diverse as Robert Louis Stevenson, Margaret Atwood, Norman McCaig, Raymond Chandler, Josephine Tey, Patricia Highsmith, Kate Millett, Joseph Heller and William Mcllvanney.
4. Ayo: Do you still enjoy reading crime fiction yourself? Why?
   Val: Why not? All the reasons I first enjoyed it still exists. At its best, it’s engaging, edifying, entertaining and escapist. All the reasons we turn to any form of art or entertainment.
5. Ayo: Do you enjoy being part of the mystery community and the accompanying events e.g. attending crime fiction conferences and book signing events? Which conferences do you always try to attend and why?
   Val: Being a writer is a very isolated existence. And I’m quite a gregarious person, so I’m very happy that there exists a community of writers and enthusiasts who enjoy socialising. It’s fun to get out and party with other people, many of whom have become good friends over the years. I like the mix of work and play at conferences, and book signing events are generally a lovely massage to the ego, though they can get a little wearing at the end of a long tour, particularly in the US where the travelling is so brutal. I usually attend St Hilda’s conference in Oxford every summer, where I particularly appreciate the intimacy of a relatively small group and the stimulation of intelligent well thought out presentations. I haven’t missed a Bouchercon since I first attended in 1994, and I love the buzz that comes with such a big convention, as well as the chance to sit down and catch up with all the friend’s I haven’t seen since the previous year. Last year I went to Magna cum Murder in Muncie, Indiana for the first time, and I’ll definitely be back there again. It’s a medium- sized gathering, about 250-300 people, a mixture of panels, author interviews and academic papers. It’s also one of the most welcoming gatherings I’ve ever attended, and I had a ball. It’s always held on the last weekend of October, so there are years when it’s easy to tag it on to Bouchercon.
6. Ayo: How would you describe your books to a novice reader and which of your books would you suggest that they start with?
   Val: I write pretty much across the genre, so the chances are that there’s something in there that will appeal to every reader. I think of the Lindsay Gordon novels as being sort of cosy – they have an amateur sleuth who gets sucked into investigations and they operate within the classic English whodunit tradition, although having a lesbian protagonist means there is a bit of a twist. The Kate Brannigans are first-person private eye novels, coming from the US tradition, and maintaining, the convention of the smart-mouthed detective who always gets her man. They differ mostly from the Lindsay Gordons in that the murder isn’t the starting point for the book , Kate is investigating other things and murder just happens along the way. Then there are the Tony Hill/Carol Jordan novels, which are dark psychological serial killer thrillers, which deal head on with issues around violent, sexually motivated homicide. The latest of those is The Last Temptation, out in February 2002. I’ve also written two standalones – A Place of Execution, which is rather hard to categorise. The first part of the book purports to be a true crime account of a case from the 1960s. In the second part of the book, the events of the past prove to have long shadows, which are finally dispelled in the course of the inquiries the “writer” of the first part of the book when she’s researching her account. Does that make a word of sense? Anyway, it’s set in and around a tightly knit Derbyshire village and there is no blood and gore. The second of these standalones is another psychological thriller featuring Fiona Cameron, and her efforts to track down a killer who is murdering crime writers.
7. Ayo: What were the last five books that you read?
   Val: No Great Mischief, Alistair McLeod Kisscut, Karin Slaughter (does I count if I read it in manuscript?) Resurrection Men, Ian Rankin Mr Sandman, Barbara Gowdy Where’s Maisie’s Panda? Lucy Cousins
8. Ayo: What’s your work schedule normally like?
   Val: I work at home on admin and email from nine till ten thirty or so. Then I go to my other office (such luxury) and write till about four-thirty. I aim to do between 1500 and 2000 words on a writing day.
9. Ayo: What do you enjoy doing when you are not writing?
   Val: Sleeping! Reading, walking, cooking, socialising with family and friends, playing computer games. Ha! Like I have time for that...
10. Ayo: What do you find the most difficult when you are writing?
    Val: Not allowing myself to be distracted.
11. Ayo: I understand that there may be a new Lindsay Gordon book called Hostage to Murder. What gave you the idea for a new book and when is it due to be published?
    Val: I’d had an idea kicking around for a while that refused to allow itself to be moulded into anything but a Lindsay novel. Then I went to Russia at the end of 2000 and fell in love with it, and that gave me the perfect foreign setting for the central section of the book, so there seemed no reason to keep fighting it! It was great fun to see where Lindsay was several years on – she’s having something of a midlife crisis, I have to tell you. The Women’s Press will probably publish it in spring 2003
12. Ayo: The Kate Brannigan books are totally different from the Lindsay Gordon books what made you decide to write the Kate Brannigan series? Val: The Lindsay Gordon one’s were only ever intended to be a trilogy. I had always planned on doing something different. I thought it would be interesting to write in first person and to see if the very American PI form could be translated to the UK, given how different our different social mores are. And I wanted to see if I could walk in very different shoes. Not to mention making a living...
13. Ayo: The Mermaid Singing won the CWA Golden Dagger in 1995, were you surprised when you found out it had won and did you feel that there was additional demand on you afterwards as a writer?
    Val: I was astonished. I didn’t think people like me won the Gold Dagger! Inevitably, it does bring a degree of pressure to perform to a certain standard, but frankly, the advantages far outweigh the downside
14. Ayo: Catherine Heathcote the narrator in A Place of Execution is a journalist like you used to be. Is she by any chance based on you or does she have any of your journalistic characteristics?
    Val: No, She’s not at all the kind of person or journalist that I was. I have no magazine journalism experience, and our personalities are quite different. I would have never made the decision she makes at the end of the book..
15. Ayo: Do you miss the world of journalism and have you managed to bring any of your experience as a journalist to your writing?
    Val: I don’t miss it at all. Nothing about it. The best lesson I learned from journalism was not to be precious about writing. It’s a job. You do it with discipline and you meet your deadlines. You can’t wait for the muse when you’re covering news, so I learned early on that it doesn’t matter what is going on in my life, I can always write.
16. Ayo: How do you feel once you have finished writing a book? Do you normally have a great sense of elation that you have finished it or do you start worrying about how well it is going to be received?
    Val: Never elation! Relief that I’ve made it to the end, depression that it hasn’t turned out as well as I had hoped, apprehension as to whether I’ll be able to do it again and anxiety about how much rewrite I’m going to have to do once my editor has got her hands on it!
17. Ayo: How easy do you believe it should be for readers to work out the solutions in detective fiction? Or do you always believe that there should be a twist in the tale?
    Val: The crime novel is no longer merely an intellectual puzzle. With the best of the genre, I don’t think it really matters if I can figure out where I’m going as I still care about how all the elements of the book work out. I like to be surprised as a reader, but I don’t mind if I’ve figured it out as long as I am enjoying the world of the novel and I’m interested in how the characters resolve matters among themselves. What I hate is the sort of book where I think I’ve figured it out and there’s not much else to distract me, so I pray the writer has actually figured out the extra twist that would make it all worthwhile, that little bit of magic that I’ve half-seen the possibility of... but they don’t get there. I’ve ploughed through pedestrian accounts of the detective’s meal with his troublesome girlfriend, dull descriptions of what should be interesting landscape and exciting events, and the ending is exactly as I thought it would be on page 89... That leaves me feeling, “What was the point of that?” As a writer, I try to keep something up my sleeve for the last few pages, but it doesn’t always work out that way, and it’s not the most important aspect of plotting.
18. Ayo: It has been a long time coming, but finally your fans will soon be able to see Wire in the Blood on television. I understand that filming actually started in October 2001. Why did it take so long and are you happy about the way things have turned out?
    Val: It took so long because I was waiting for the right team to make it. I wasn’t prepared to entrust these books to the first person that came along looking to option them. I’ve seen too many good novels turned into trash TV. I wanted to be sure the books would be treated with a degree of respect, that they would be made with appropriate production values and the right actors. Robson Green’s company, Coastal Productions, fit all my criteria, and I’m very pleased with the way things have worked out. Robson is a terrific Tony, and Hermione Norris is dream casting for Carol. The scripts are very effective, though of course certain narrative elements in the books have had to be sacrificed because they don’t work for TV. I’ve seen the finished version of the Mermaids Singing, and I have to tell you, it had me on the edge of my seat!
19. Ayo: Your latest book The Last Temptation is a long overdue return to the Tony Hill/ Carol Jordan series. In the book a clinically efficient killer is murdering psychologists on the continent. Psychological profiler Dr Tony Hill is drafted on to the case. Meanwhile, DCI Carol Jordan is en route to Berlin too, on a covert police operation. Both of them have to explore a past of atrocities and a present day full of cruelty. The Tony Hill/Carol Jordan is in fact my favourite amongst the three series that you have written. Did the fact that Wire in the Blood was being filmed for television have any bearing on your decision to write a new Tony Hill/Carol Jordan book?
    Val: No, I had already been planning The Last Temptation for a couple of years and I had in fact started writing it before we did the deal with Coastal.
20. Ayo: You have been very supportive of Mystery Women since its inception. It is the very first group of its kind in the UK. Do you believe that there is enough support for crime writers in the UK especially female crime writers and do you believe that the support given today is much better than when you first started writing?
    Val: There’s a lot more support around now for writers in this genre than when I first began. We have much more recognition at literary festivals, we have are own crime writing festivals and the development of the regional chapters within the CWA has been a positive move. Mystery Women does a great job, and I think crime writers are unique in the level of support we get from our readers and from booksellers. It’s enabled the formation of such alliances as The Murder Squad and the Unusual Suspects, which has given writers a unique opportunity to promote themselves. I think we do pretty well in terms of support systems. Compared with literary novelists or poets or biographers…
21. Ayo: You have recently set up one of the best author web sites going. It has a lot of personal and background information about you on it. What made you decide at long last that you needed a web site and what took you so long? Val: What took me so long? Inertia and laziness… I’ve been online for a very long time, even before www existed, and I understood the value of a good-looking, well-run site. It took me a little time to find the right person to construct and manage the site, and even longer for me to get myself together and supply her with what she needed from me. It’s an important resource for my readers and publishers world-wide – it allows me to keep them informed about what’s happening in my professional life. And it allows them to talk to me about my work. And anything else that gets their juices flowing…
22. Ayo: Finally, if you could take five books away with you on a desert island which ones would you choose and why?
    Val: The Complete Works of Shakespeare – because there’s so much to get my head round, it wouldn’t matter if I was never rescued, I’d have something for every mood and every state of mind. Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson – I’d have to have some Stevenson with me and this would be best suited to a desert island. A Guide to the Flora and Fauna (including fish) of the climatic region I was stranded in, partly for practical reasons of what I could and couldn’t eat, but also so that I would know what I was looking at. Any volume of The Bedside Guardian – it would contain enough diversity and bizarre to keep my mind stimulated and remind me of the world I left behind. And it would probably give me ides for a dozen or so novels… The Chalet School in Exile, by Elinor M Brent-Dyer – this is my comfort blanket book, the one I always go back to when I’m in bed with ‘flu and feeling miserable and sorry for myself. And I suspect there would be days like that even on the most idyllic of desert islands…
    
    Val McDermid’s books:-
    Kate Brannigan Series-
    Dead Beat, Kick Back, Crack Down, Clean Break, Blue Genes and Star Struck.
    Lindsay Gordon Series-
    Report for Murder, Common Murder, Final Edition, Union Jack and Booked For Murder.
    Tony Hill/ Carol Jordan Series-
    The Mermaids Singing, TheWire in the Blood and The Last Temptation.
    Standalone novels-
    A Place of Execution, Killing the Shadows
    Non-fiction books -
    A Suitable Job For a Woman: Inside the World of Female Private Eyes
    Visit Val’s web site http://www.valmcdermid.com
    
    

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