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.
Publication Order of Lindsay Gordon Books
Report for Murder
1987
Common Murder
1989
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
