Final Edition / Open and Shut / Deadline for Murder
1991
Union Jack / Conferences Are Murder
1993
Booked for Murder
1996
Hostage to Murder
2003
Publication Order of Kate Brannigan Books
Dead Beat
1992
Kick Back
1993
Crack Down
1994
Clean Break
1995
Blue Genes
1996
Star Struck
1998
Publication Order of Tony Hill and Carol Jordan Books
The Mermaids Singing
1995
The Wire in the Blood
1997
The Last Temptation
2002
The Torment of Others
2004
Beneath the Bleeding
2007
Fever of the Bone
2009
The Retribution
2011
Cross and Burn
2013
Splinter the Silence
2015
Insidious Intent
2017
How the Dead Speak
2019
Publication Order of Karen Pirie Books
The Distant Echo
2003
A Darker Domain
2008
The Skeleton Road
2014
Out of Bounds
2016
Broken Ground
2018
Still Life
2020
Past Lying
2023
Silent Bones
2025
Publication Order of Allie Burns Books
1979
2021
1989
2022
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
A Place of Execution
1999
Killing the Shadows
2000
The Grave Tattoo
2006
Trick of the Dark
2010
The Vanishing Point
2012
Northanger Abbey
2014
Queen Macbeth
2024
Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas
Cleanskin
2006
This Door of the Seas (With: Jo Sharp)
2026
Publication Order of Short Story Collections
The Writing on the Wall
1997
Stranded
2005
Christmas Is Murder
2020
Publication Order of Children’s Books
My Granny Is a Pirate
2012
Publication Order of Graphic Novels
Resistance
2021
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
A Suitable Job for a Woman
1994
Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime
2014
My Scotland
2019
Winter: The Story of a Season
2025
About Val McDermid
Val McDermid (born 4 June 1955 in Kirkcaldy, Fife) is a Scottish crime writer whose five series include the Tony Hill and Carol Jordan novels, adapted for television as “Wire in the Blood”, and the Karen Pirie cold case novels, adapted by ITV. According to her official biography she has sold more than 19 million books, and her work has been translated into more than 40 languages.
McDermid grew up in the Fife coalfield and read English at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, where she was the first student admitted from a Scottish state school. She trained as a journalist in Devon and then spent fourteen years on national newspapers in Glasgow and Manchester. A first attempt at a novel was rejected, but she reworked it as a play that was staged in Plymouth when she was 23. She began her first crime novel, “Report for Murder”, in 1984. The Women’s Press published it in 1987, and she left journalism in 1991 to write full time.
“Report for Murder” introduced the journalist Lindsay Gordon, and a second series followed about the private investigator Kate Brannigan. “The Mermaids Singing” (1995), the first novel to pair clinical psychologist Tony Hill with police officer Carol Jordan, won the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger. The Hill and Jordan books, which are known for graphic depictions of violence, were filmed as “Wire in the Blood” with Robson Green and ran from 2002 to 2008.
Detective Karen Pirie first appeared in “The Distant Echo” (2003) and now leads an eight-book series, the latest being “Silent Bones” (2025). McDermid’s newest series follows the journalist Allie Burns at ten-year intervals, starting with “1979” and “1989”. Her standalone novels include “A Place of Execution” and “Queen Macbeth” (2024), a reimagining of the story of Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth.
McDermid received the CWA Diamond Dagger in 2010 and is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 2003 she co-founded the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate. She also created the BBC One drama “Traces”, has written non-fiction including “Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime”, and sings with a band called the Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers.
Her recent books are “Winter: The Story of a Season” (2025) and “This Door of the Seas” (2026), a novella about the Darien Venture written with her partner Jo Sharp, the Geographer Royal for Scotland.
