Dates for your Diary

• Wire in the Blood II DVD out now in UK
  
  
• Stranded, out now. It features an introduction by Ian Rankin. Published by Bywater Books. For more info:
  http://www.flambardpress.co.uk
  
  
• Latest Book by Val McDermid The Grave Tattoo - out now in the UK. US publication date May 2006.
  
  Synopsis
  A superb psychological thriller in which present-day murder has its roots in the eighteenth century and the mutiny on The Bounty Imagine an undiscovered manuscript by William Wordsworth. Imagine that manuscript relates to an unknown version of the mutiny on The Bounty in the words of Fletcher Christian. Imagine what it would be worth, and what passions it would stir There is a strong rumour in the Lake District that, contrary to popular belief, Fletcher Christian was not murdered on Pitcairn Island in 1793. Instead, he secretly returned to his native Cumbria. But the desire to tell his story burned bright inside him. And who better to entrust it to than his old schoolmate, the famous writer William Wordsworth? The manuscript has remained hidden for generations, its significance unknown. Until now. Graduate student Matthew Kendal's inquiries stir up long-forgotten memories. And before long, murder stalks the manuscript as ruthlessly as a hidden killer.
  
  
• Read an interview with Val McDermid about her new book The Grave Tattoo published on 04.02.06
  

Sep. 2005

Val McDermid’s Lindsay Gordon Mystery Series
by Malinda Lo, September 14, 2005

Read a great article about Val's Lindsay Gordon Mystery Series at AfterEllen.com

http://www.afterellen.com/Print/2005/9/val.html

Sep. 2005

Val says..

Given how many blogs there are out there, it's often hard to find the really good ones. One of my favourites is run by Norman Geras. It's always thought-provoking, wide-ranging and anti-complacency. Just when you think you've sorted out your position on something, Norman will throw out a thought or direct you to a website that makes you think again.

One of the joys of his eclectic site is that he invites writers to talk about books that have been important to them. And I'm honoured to tell you that my own contribution to this series has just been posted on Norm's blog. To check it out, go to:
http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2005/09/writers_choice__2.html
Hope you enjoy it. And even if you don't find me that interesting, I'm sure you'll find lots of other fascinating stuff to tickle your synapses there.

July 2005

Val goes to Harrogate...

Quiz Night

A big thank you to Rhian for these pictures. Any one else got any?

 

 

These next 4 pictures are from Sandra...

Thanks Sandra!

July 2005

THE CRIME WRITERS ASSOCIATION GOLDEN JUBILEE DAGGER OF DAGGERS AWARD

Excitement has been building for the Crime Writers Association Dagger of Daggers and the shortlist for this prestigious award can now be revealed.

Its fifty years this year since The Crime Writers Association first honoured the best in crime fiction with the presentation of their Crossed Red Herring award to Winston Graham for The Little Walls. In 1960 this annual award became the CWA Gold Dagger for Fiction and since then it has been won by some of the best-known names in crime fiction, from John Le Carré and Dick Francis, to Ruth Rendell, Ian Rankin and Sara Paretsky.

This year, to mark the Golden Jubilee, the membership of the CWA has been given the unique opportunity to vote for the past winner of the Crossed Red Herring or the Gold Dagger whom they feel is the best of the best - the Dagger of Daggers. This is the first time that such an award has been made to a crime writer by his or her peers.

The shortlist was intended to be just five names and titles, but competition has been so fierce this has been extended to seven. A second vote will take place in August to produce the eventual winner. The prize - a crystal trophy - will be awarded at the Dagger Awards Luncheon in the King George III Room, The Brewery, Chiswell Street, London EC1Y 4SD on Tuesday, November 8th, 12 noon for 12.30pm. The guest speaker will be Terry Pratchett.

The shortlist, in chronological order, is as follows, with an appreciation of each title by various fellow crime writers:

1963 JOHN LE CARRÉ - THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD
In 1963 John le Carrés third book arrived like a cold blast over the Berlin Wall. Len Deighton had already put the boot into Fleming with The Ipcress File the previous year, but The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was chillier and more implacable.

The book didnt just revolutionise spy/thriller writing. It is a lesson in taut construction (under 200 pages), narrative drive and manipulation of the reader - your grasp of whos on whose side switches backwards and forwards, but the final revelation is implicit in the opening chapter. The book is populated by dupes, cynics and bureaucrats, and the odd idealist. This is a morally ambiguous world yet le Carré never lets us forget that the other side is worse, just. A cold blast, yes, but a bracing one. Philip Gooden

1974 ANTHONY PRICE - OTHER PATHS TO GLORY
How can anything that happened in 1916 - and anything that happened on Hameau Ridge - have anything to do with whats happening now? Its crazy.

Crazy? Audley sat back, suddenly more relaxed. No, its not crazy. Intriguing, certainly - maybe even remarkable. But not crazy.

Paul Mitchell, a young historian of the First World War, is removed from his library and thrust into a dangerous world of spies, betrayal and sudden death. Unlike Graham, the engineer, in Amblers Journey into Fear (1940) - another innocent swept into danger by events beyond his control - Mitchell finds he has an aptitude for cloak-and-dagger work.

The men who recruit him - Dr Audley and Colonel Butler - the stars of a series of splendid detective stories-come-thrillers - are Buchanesque.

But he really is a soldier? [Mitchell asks]

Jack Butler? Audley looked up from his paperback. Oh yes, and a good one too - were not all frauds. He won avery good Military Cross in Korea, and I believe he was a first-rate regimental officer . . .

But the plots are much more sophisticated - a labyrinthine chase through history to solve a problem of the security of the worlds leaders in the present day.

And it is this element which makes Other Paths To Glory so original. For the first time a thriller-writer uses clues from events from long ago to solve a riddle of vital importance for todays spies. For Price, the past resonates in the present and if we forget it, we do so at our peril. David Roberts

1981 MARTIN CRUZ SMITH - GORKY PARK
Gorky Park is probably the most famous novel on the shortlist - famous because it was both groundbreaking and very good. It was a crime novel that ranked with world class literature. Though it incorporated elements traditional to the crime story - gruesome death, a lone cop isolated from his colleagues, his troublesome private life and a bleak conspiracy from above - it transported these elements to a totally believable modern Russia.

Cruz Smith has the extraordinary ability to write as a native of wherever his book is set (his Tokyo Station and The Indians Won are only two examples) and in Gorky Park it was impossible to believe he hadn't served in the Soviet police. He must have walked every ice-bound scrap of ground. The writing was masterly and the plot had romance, treachery and every twist a reader could hope for.

Then, as if the setting and plot were not enough, he tossed a wilfully fractious US investigator into an already simmering stroganoff, and his Russian classic became a world class masterpiece. Russell James

1982 PETER LOVESEY - THE FALSE INSPECTOR DEW
You have to love an author who called his first book, Wobble to Death. Since then, he has turned out many a twisting tale, but The False Inspector Dew is his best-loved and his masterpiece. What could be better for atmosphere and possibilities than a grand ocean liner? Both the torpedoed Lusitania and the post-war Mauritania have parts in a witty drama. Few have employed this classic closed environment to such good effect. Hardly anyone on board is what they seem. Other authors have used the setting well, but where Lovesey surpasses is that among his sea-going predators even the supposed detective sets out to commit the perfect marine murder. Lovesey overturns the norm, where the sleuth should a trusted, reliable centre: Walter Baronov - itself a fake name - is as tricksy as they come and we know it. However, he is not as devious as his author!

This is fine writing. There is a plausible cast of roguish characters, whose cynical motives are completely believable and their moves choreographed with the lightest touch. The style is direct and elegant. The readers sympathies are bamboozled with effortless skill and Walter is undone in a brilliant dénouement. The end is superb. Lindsey Davis

1987 BARBARA VINE - A FATAL INVERSION
It's years since I first read Barbara Vine's A Fatal Inversion and it has been the greatest possible pleasure to re-read it now that it has been shortlisted for the Dagger of Daggers. Set partly during the worst heatwave of the mid-1970s and partly a decade later, it reads as freshly as though it had been written last week. As with all the novels Ruth Rendell has written under this pseudonym, there is an air of menace and anxiety from the first page. This time, she tricks readers into a premature sense of relief when she introduces her plot with a body, which turns out only a few lines later to be that of a dog, put out of its misery by caring owners. Just as her readers are relaxing she hits them with a human corpse and a mystery that deepens over the succeeding pages.

We are gradually introduced to a group of adults who once lived together in the ravishing country house near the dog's burial ground, only to part when something dreadful happened. They agreed then never to meet again, but circumstances bring them together. Although we know they are connected with the rediscovered corpse, Vine withholds the full story until almost the last page, when it seems both surprising and well-signalled.

Utterly believable, both as heedless hippyish students and as troubled adults, the actors in this tormented drama should be unlikeable, but Vine's great skill is to show the vulnerable humanity in even the nastiest of characters and none of these fall into this category. No wonder this intriguing and unusual crime novel won the Gold Dagger in 1987. Natasha Cooper

1990 REGINALD HILL - BONES AND SILENCE
Detective-Superintendent Andrew Dalziel believes that he witnessed a murder. Peter Pascoe thinks that his boss may be mistaken. Football hooliganism raises its ugly head. A police sergeant is a victim of gay-bashing. Anonymous letters arrive on the Supers desk, warning of an imminent suicide. A husband asks his nurse-wife to steal drugs from hospital. And the irrepressible Eileen Chung stages her production of the Mystery Plays with Dalziel in the role of God.

From these and other apparently random elements, Reginald Hill has fashioned a seamless narrative that beguiles from start to finish. It blends wild comedy, dark tragedy, psychological insight and an erudition carried so lightly that that it defies belief. Gems pop up on almost every page - Wield had the kind of face which must have thronged the eastern gate of Paradise after the eviction and Dalziel has the effulgent smile of a man who wants to sell a used Lada.

Bones and Silence takes it title from Virginia Woolf and its theme from Ibsen. Its a master class in crime writing. Prospero lied. Instead of burying his staff, he bequeathed it to Reg Hill. Pure magic. Keith Miles

1995 VAL MCDERMID - THE MERMAIDS SINGING
This is both superbly easy and remarkably difficult to read. Easy because Val McDermids beautifully drawn characters and effortless prose mean you cant put it down. Difficult because the compelling and unsettling narrative about a serial killer whose victims are horrifically tortured, told partly through the killers own diary, grips your attention with appalled fascination. An emotional car crash of a story, violent and powerful, but you just cant tear your eyes away.

The book is all the more challenging for the fact that McDermid seems to slip into the skin of her cruel and damaged killer so shockingly well. Under her deft touch, the perpetrator is brought to gruesome life as an entirely understandable and human monster. But this is balanced by characters you can really root for - clinical psychologist Dr Tony Hill and his police liaison, DI Carol Jordan. In particular, Tony Hill is a unique protagonist, in some ways as deeply flawed as the deranged minds he studies.

This book, McDermids tenth, also marks a turning point in the career of one of the most successful British crime writers. It heralds her masterful entrance into the world of the deeply disturbing psychological chiller. A worthy winner. Zo Sharp

For background information on the Crime Writers Association and the Dagger Awards, please see our website - www.thecwa.co.uk

July 2005

The winner of the Theakston's Old Perculier Crime Novel of the Year has now been announced...

Crime writing fans have spent 12 weeks casting thousands of votes to select rising star, Mark Billingham and his novel Lazy Bones as the first ever winner of the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year, the only crime literary award to be voted for by the general public.

June. 2005

The Distant Echo has been shortlisted for the 2005 Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year.

The award is open to any crime novel by a British author published for the first time in paperback in 2004. Sponsored by Theakston's and promoted throughout the UK in Ottakar's Bookstores, the winner will be announced at the Theakston's Old Peculier Harrogate Crime Writing Festival on July 21st.

For more information go to www.harrogate-festival.org.uk and follow the links.

Val says...
I'm happy to report that thanks probably to all of you, I have made it to the shortlist of the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year.

It's the only award of its kind to be voted for by readers and now you get the chance to make your voice heard by voting in the second round, where six get whittled down to one. (They're all on special offer at Ottakar's bookshops; Ottakar's are the partner booksellers for the festival.)

Voting closes on 15 July and the winner of the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year will be announced at the opening night of the Theakston's Old Peculier Harrogate Crime Writing Festival on July 21st. The winner will receive £3,000 and a handmade, engraved beer barrel provided by award sponsors, Theakston's Old Peculier.

So please go online to the festival website (see below) or to www.ottakars.co.uk to register your vote. Only one vote per email address, and as before, I promise there will be no reprisals against any of you who vote for one of the other authors. Since all the other five are my pals, I'm not going to throw my toys out of the pram if somebody else wins!

The Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Shortlist
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mark Billingham - Lazy Bones Time Warner Book Group

Simon Kernick - The Murder Exchange Transworld

Val McDermid - The Distant Echo HarperCollins

Ian Rankin - A Question of Blood Orion

Andrew Taylor - The American Boy HarperCollins

Minette Walters - Disordered Minds Macmillan

Vote for your favourite book on the Festival website now! http://www.harrogate-festival.org.uk/crime

Feb. 2005

Val Says...

It's here! Wire in the Blood III will hit UK screens next Monday, February 21st at 9pm on ITV. There will be four ninety minute episodes, each featuring an original storyline based on my characters. I can promise you that it's even better than before. Hard to believe, I know, but I think the cast and crew have excelled themselves this time.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

Transmission dates for Wire in the Blood III down under.
Australia commences weekly from the 1 April
NZ commences weekly from the 2 April

BBC America will be premiering the third season of Wire in the Blood on Mondays at 9:00 pm (ET/PT) starting April 11, 2005 as part of their "Mystery Monday" programming block.
They will update their website shortly so keep an eye on www.bbcamerica.com.

More information about the series...

For loads more information about the new series visit www.robsongreen.com

Feb. 2005

Val says..

I know many readers have found it difficult to track down the Lindsay Gordon titles in the US. Well, I'm happy to say you can now buy them online directly from their new publisher, Bywater Books. They have the backlist currently available and they'll be publishing Hostage to Murder for the first time in the US on April 1st. And while stocks last, anyone ordering two or more books will receive a free copy of Clean Break, featuring Kate Brannigan, Manchester's finest PI.

Happy reading!

Nov. 2004

This picture of Val and Sujata Massey was taken by Dr. Jacob Casper at this year's World Mystery Convention in Toronto.

Sujata Massey says:
"I am another mystery writer and galpal of Val's. In the picture, we had just finished some mischief on the "Bad Girls" panel at Bouchercon!"

Oct. 2004

Val was awarded the Barry for Best British Crime Novel for The Distant Echo at the Bouchercon (World Mystery Convention) in Toronto.

The Barry is awarded by the readers of Deadly Pleasures magazine. Val previously won the Barry for A Place of Execution.

She said, 'I'm thrilled to have won the Barry. But I was genuinely
surprised -- so surprised I hadn't actually prepared an acceptance speech.
It's always an honour to win an award, but to win it in the teeth of such
strong competition makes me feel even more pleased!'

Sept. 2004

Val says..

More good news! The abridged audio version of A Distant Echo has won Gold in the Crime/Thriller category at the Spoken Word Publishing Association Awards. Unfortunately, I couldn't be there myself, but Peter Capaldi, who did a first-class job of narrating the book, collected on my behalf.

July 2004

Here is me looking madly blissed out, receiving the 2004 Sherlock Award for Best Crime Novel for The Distant Echo...

These awards, recognising the best in detective fiction, are presented by SHERLOCK magazine. They are unique because they are given to the detective rather than the author - the creation rather than the creator. Of course, the author is invited to the prize-giving ceremony and gets to keep the Sherlock, a stylish bust representing the Great Detective.
The awards are given to books published in the previous year.

The Sherlock Awards were conceived by Mike Ripley, crime novelist and reviewer. The first awards ceremony was held in 1999 at Murder One, the premier crime fiction shop in Britain on Charing Cross Lane in London. In 2002 the awards moved to the Crime Scene at the National Film Theatre.
Past guest presenters have included Julian Rathbone, Denis Norden and Peter Lovesey.

(Needs a flash plug-in)

June 2004

FAME AT LAST!
I have clocked up a few achievements over the years, but none that compares with this.

Tonight on The Archers (BBC Radio4, the world's longest running soap opera, an everyday story of country folk.) I was name-checked by Linda Snell, the village busybody.

Her very words: 'I'm a Val McDermid woman myself. She understands the depraved mind.'

Click on the green button to hear it yourself..

May 2004

Next on my agenda is the publication of The Torment of Others, the new Tony and Carol novel which is published in the UK at the end of the month. It comes out in the US and in Germany in the autumn. This is always the nailbiting moment, wondering if my readers are going to enjoy it as much as I hope they will. I'm not doing many events around the time of publication - I think I got totally toured out last year, and I decided to take it a little easier this time around.

Out in the US May 2005

Click here to find out more about this book

A Place of Execution
Audio Book

 

In a development deal with BBC Wales, A Place of Execution is being adapted as a TV film.

The script is being written by Danny Boyle, whose extensive TV writing credits include Hamish Macbeth and Inspector Morse. Danny is particularly adept at capturing the spirit of small, remote communities, which makes him the perfect choice for this book.