Val McDermid's Blog, page 11
November 16, 2016
WALKING THE HIGH WIRE WITH VAL MCDERMID AND MARK BILLINGHAM…
What do you get when you put two heavyweights of the Crime Fiction world together on one stage at Humber Mouth? Chemistry and then some. Val McDermid and Mark Billingham played off each other like they’d been doing a double act for years.
With thirty novels ‘not out’, endless radio plays and dramas Val McDermid is a true doyenne of the genre. Her books are read worldwide and her Wire in the Blood series found critical and popular acclaim on TV as well as the page, with Geordie actor Robson Green brilliantly taking the role of Dr. Tony Hill. Speaking about her Lifetime Achievement Award Val says,‘You normally have to die before you get one of those.’ It was actually Mark Billingham who presented her with it at Harrogate Crimewriting Festival, she explains how having been part of ‘Harrogate’ since it began, she is especially pleased with that one.
Mark Billingham is also no stranger to success, with sixteen novels to his name, including the deeply disturbing Thorne series, with David Morrissey in the title role, which debuted on Sky One in 2010. He was presented with the UK’s top crime-fiction award the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the year for Lazybones in 2005.
In conversation with Nick Quantrill – a crime fiction writer who set his acclaimed Joe Geraghty series right here on the streets of Hull – the two bestselling authors have been showered with accolades and awards, but you wouldn’t think it to hear them. Incredibly likeable, open ,honest and straightforward about their work they delight, entertain and even thrill, the Hull Central Library crowd.
Between the three of them they talk TV adaptations with Val saying ‘First time I sat down with Robson and co. I thought these people really get it.’ She continues, ‘As long as the tone of the book is still there, and there is not a dislocation between the book and the television it works.’
You normally have to die before you get one of those
Reminding us that it doesn’t always work Val explains how Reg Hill did his best not to let any of his fellow authors see the first incarnation of the much loved Dalziel and Pascoe with by all people, Hale and Pace.
The two authors also discuss the importance of having standalone novels as well as the highly anticipated series of books, often featuring one detective.
Picture: Jerome Whittingham @Photomoments
Read the full article at humbermouth.com
October 17, 2016
17 – 31 October – Sleuths, Spies & Sorcerers
Val McDermid – Sleuths, Spies & Sorcerers
Monday 17th October 2016
BBC Four 9pm
Sleuths, Spies & Sorcerers – Andrew Marr’s Paperback Heroes
Starts Monday 17th October at 9pm on BBC Four with Episode 1 “Detectives”
Episode 2 “Fantasy” (24 October)
Episode 3 “Spies” (31 October)
October 5, 2016
Author’s Book Group meets Val McDermid…
Words by LORAINE PATRICK
Photograph by FRAZER RICE
Earlier this year Val McDermid was honoured with an outstanding contribution to Crime Fiction award.
Previous winners of the prestigious title, given at the Theakstons Harrogate Crime Writing Festival, include Ruth Rendell, P.D. James and Reginald Hill. The Scots writer is up there with the best but a more down to earth woman you couldn’t wish to meet.
September 30, 2016
Val McDermid on PD James: ‘She faced the darkness head on’…
Like so many crime writers, PD James was drawn to her vocation out of love. Before she took up her pen, she was a keen reader of detective novels, and over her long career she remained fascinated by the so-called golden age that followed the end of the first world war.
But she was more than a fan. She applied her keen intelligence to what she read, and developed a genuine expertise on the subject. I once heard her lecture on the four “queens of crime” – Margery Allingham, Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh and Dorothy L Sayers – and she wrote a fascinating monograph on the subject, Talking About Detective Fiction. This love for the work of her predecessors is evident in a new collection of her short stories: she picks the pockets of the mechanics of golden age plotting; Agatha Christie is referenced several times; and there are knowing nods to the conventions of traditional, “cosy” mystery stories.
This appropriation of the conventions of the past sometimes misleads people into thinking of James as a cosy writer. The reality is that she is anything but, and she took on those conventions only to subvert them in an often witty way. One thing in particular sets her apart from the mainstream tradition of interwar English crime fiction, with its stately homes and bourgeois villages where reality never rears its ill-mannered head. She understands that murder is nasty and brutal, that it is fuelled by the most malevolent of motives, and she’s not afraid to face that darkness head on. Her understanding of what she often called “wickedness” is creepily accurate. There’s nothing cosy about the murders in her stories, however much their settings mimic those of their forerunners.
Photograph: PD James in 2003 Photograph: David Sandison/Rex
Read the full article on The Guardian website…
September 15, 2016
A life of crime…
Val McDermid has been thrilling readers with complex, fast-paced detective stories for nearly 30 years. She tells Chris Moss about her latest release, her 30th novel.
“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.” Joseph Heller’s famous line from Catch-22 could have been the epigraph for Val McDermid’s latest novel – her 30th, and her fourth to feature hyper-curious cold case rummager DCI Karen Pirie.
Already acclaimed by critics as well as fans, it’s a dark, knotty story that channels some of Scotland and the UK’s biggest social and political issues – including privacy, LGBT rights, immigration and mental health – and weaves them into a many-pronged investigation into a horrific traffic accident, an apparent suicide, a supposed air disaster, and a complex case of adoption and inheritance.
The author’s craft is there at every tricksy turn of the plot, but so is an impressively broad general knowledge and a clear passion for current affairs.
I’m in the business of writing about characters and am always driven by the story
“I never think about themes when I’m working on a novel,” insists McDermid. “I’m in the business of writing about characters and am always driven by the story. I’m a bit of a news junky and so it might be a news item or some fact I’ve picked up that finds itself in a novel. Often it can be quite tangential.”
The ideas for Out of Bounds, she says, occurred to her while she was researching her 2015 non-fiction book Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime.
“I was at a conference and two guys from Greater Manchester were discussing the ways to use familial DNA to uncover cold cases. That intrigued me. Families are seldom as simple as the image we have of them, and that got me.”
The novel is an exploration of the implications – for the victims of past crimes and for justice in general – that new kinds of forensic evidence can have when it comes to unearthing new facts. As ever with McDermid’s stories, the moment the reader is prepared to judge a character, the author turns the screw and forces us to reassess our prejudices.
Read the full article on The Big Issue North website
September 6, 2016
McDermid to chair Wellcome Book Prize judging panel…
September 5, 2016 by Natasha Onwuemezi
Scottish crime writer Val McDermid is to chair the Wellcome Book Prize’s 2017 judging panel, which features leading figures from across the worlds of literature, academia, science and the media.
McDermid is joined on the panel by Simon Baron-Cohen, professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge; Gemma Cairney, BBC broadcaster and author; Tim Lewens, professor of philosophy of science at the University of Cambridge; and Di Speirs, books editor for BBC Radio.
The judging panel will be looking for the best book of the year – fiction or non-fiction – that engages with the topics of health and medicine. The prize aims to reach broad audiences, stimulating interest in and debate around medicine, health and illness through books and reading.
For the first time, the prize will release a longlist of 12 books, set to be announced in January 2017. This will be followed by a shortlist of six books in March 2017, with the winner being announced at a ceremony at Wellcome Collection in April 2017.
Read the full article on the Bookseller website…
September 3, 2016
Val McDermid: ‘Left to our own devices, writers adopt the habits of a hermit crab’
The crime writer on bingeing on West Wing, taking time out on computer games and the joys of first-class train travel
Illustration by Alan Vest
When I first became a full-time writer, I mostly had writing days. People seldom wanted to listen to me read, consult my opinion or watch me perform. But the combination of success and the proliferation of literary festivals and media platforms has profoundly altered the even tenor of my mostly isolated days.
That’s probably a benefit; the observation and the company of others is, after all, what provides a writer with raw material. Left to our own devices, we’ve got a tendency to adopt the habits of a hermit crab.
I tend to write in 20‑minute bursts. That seems to be the length of my concentration span
Now I try to carve out a chunk of the year when the other calls on my time are kept to a minimum. Three or four months when I can more or less stay at home and write. January, February, March and, when I can get away with it, into April. When the weather is at its most miserable and I mind being indoors least. But my life is complicated, so even then I spend the equivalent of one of most people’s working days on trains each week.
Read the full article on The Guardian website…
August 31, 2016
Val McDermid and Chris Brookmyre in running for McIlvanney prize…
The finalists for a Scottish crime writing award named in honour of the late author William McIlvanney have been announced.
Val McDermid, Chris Brookmyre, Doug Johnstone and ES Thomson are all shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize.
The winner of the Scottish Crime Book of the Year will be awarded The McIlvanney Prize at the opening ceremony of crime writing festival Bloody Scotland on Friday.
McIlvanney, who revitalised the Scottish crime genre and became known as the Godfather of Tartan Noir, died at his home in Glasgow on December 5, 2015 aged 79.
His brother, renowned sports journalist Hugh McIlvanney, will present the award at a ceremony in Stirling.
The winner will receive £1,000 and all four finalists will be presented with a full set of McIlvanney novels, including the acclaimed Laidlaw trilogy.
From The Herald Scotland wed 31 August
August 23, 2016
Val McDermid believes we’re dying of too much news…
Written by Murray Scougall, 22/08/2016
AS she prepares to release her 30th novel this week, there’s little doubt that Val McDermid is one of Scotland’s most prolific writers.
Throw in non-fiction releases, a kids’ book, short story collections, some plays and radio dramas – all in less than 30 years – and you would be right in thinking the ideas run thick and fast.
But there was one time in her career when Val suffered writers’ block – and the experience left her so frazzled she made sure it would never happen again. “About 12 years ago I changed my novel-writing process quite dramatically,” explained Val, from Kirkcaldy.
Read the full article on the Sunday Post website
July 26, 2016
Artsnight
Series 3: 10. Val McDermid
Is fiction the best way to access the truth? Award-winning Scottish crime writer Val McDermid explores the relationship between fiction, video games and real-life crime documentary. She talks to Ken MacLeod and Richard K Morgan, whose science fiction novels offer a commentary on current political events. She meets Malath Abbas, the designer of Killbox, a new game about the ethics of drone warfare, and Lucas Pope, whose Bafta-winning Papers Please examines the moral and political decisions faced by an immigration officer. McDermid discusses the importance and the pitfalls of covering real-life crime with veteran documentary maker and criminologist Roger Graef.
Available until 26 August 2016
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