Val McDermid

Val McDermid grew up in a Scottish mining community then read English at Oxford. She was a journalist for sixteen years, spending the last three as Northern Bureau Chief of a national Sunday tabloid. She is now a full-time writer and lives in South Manchester.

Lived: 1955 -

Author Of

Report for Murder

Freelance journalist Lindsay Gordon is strapped for cash – otherwise she would never have agreed to cover a fundraising gala at Derbyshire House Girls’ School. But when the star attraction is found garrotted with her own cello string, Lindsay finds herself investigating a vicious murder. Who had the key to the locked room in which(…)

Clean Break

Manchester-based, kick-boxing PI Kate Brannigan takes on the hard men of European organised crime as she battles to recover a Monet in a case that stretches love and loyalty to the limits. Manchester-based private eye Kate Brannigan is not amused when thieves have the audacity to steal a Monet from a stately home where she’s(…)

Blue Genes

Kate Brannigan’s not just having a bad day, she’s having a bad week. Her boyfriend’s death notice is in the paper, her plan to catch a team of fraudsters is in disarray and a neo-punk band want her to find out who’s trashing their flyposters. And her business partner wants her to buy him out.(…)

Common Murder

A protest group hits the headlines when unrest explodes into murder. Already on the scene, journalist Lindsay Gordon desperately tries to strike a balance between personal and professional responsibilities. As she peels back the layers of deception surrounding the protest and its opponents, she finds that no one – ratepayer or reporter, policeman or peace(…)

Union Jack (Conferences are Murder)

Lindsay Gordon is not pleased when she has to leave California to research women’s roles in the trade union movement. Her memories of the British Left were not pleasant. The discovery that Tom “Union” Jack has gained even more power, and his violent death leaves Lindsay suspect number one.

Booked for Murder

It seems as if the woman’s death was an accident, but the circumstances are an exact replica of the modus operandi used in her latest novel, of which only three people are aware.

Star Struck

Bodyguarding had never made it to Manchester PI Kate Brannigan’s wish list. But somebody’s got to pay the bills at Brannigan & Co, and if the only earner on offer is playing nursemaid to a paranoid soap star, the fast-talking computer-loving white-collar crime expert has to swallow her pride and slip into something more glam(…)

Final Edition (Open and Shut, Deadline for Murder)

When she returns from a self-imposed exile in Italy, journalist Lindsay Gordon finds her world turned upside down. The lover she thought would wait for her has found a new partner; an ex-lover has been murdered; and a former colleague has been jailed for the crime. But some disagree with the jury’s verdict and soon(…)

Hostage to Murder

Spraining an ankle is rarely a stroke of luck, but for Lindsay Gordon, jobless in Glasgow, the injury is her introduction to young freelance journalist Rory McLaren and the opening of a new chapter in her life. Rory’s invitation to work alongside her in her booth at the Cafe Virginia is irresistible. From there it(…)

A Darker Domain

The superb new psychological thriller from bestselling author Val McDermid mixes fiction with one of the most symbolic and exceptional moments in recent history – the national miners’ strike It seemed like an unsolvable mystery at the time: a wealthy heiress and son kidnapped in Fife, then a botched payoff, leaving her dead with no(…)

A Place of Execution

Winter 1963: two children have disappeared in Manchester; the murderous careers of Myra Hindley and Ian Brady have begun. On a freezing day in December, another child goes missing: 13-year-old Alison Carter vanishes from the isolated Derbyshire hamlet of Scardale. For the young George Bennett it is the beginning of his most difficult and harrowing(…)

The Grave Tattoo

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(…)

The Vanishing Point

Young Jimmy Higgins is snatched from an airport security checkpoint while his guardian watches helplessly from the glass inspection box. But this is no ordinary abduction, as Jimmy is no ordinary child. His mother was Scarlett, a reality TV star who, dying of cancer and alienated from her unreliable family, entrusted the boy to the(…)

Trick of the Dark

‘Death is a hollow drum whose beat has measured out my adult life.’ So writes Jay Macallan Stewart in her latest volume of memoirs. But nobody has ever asked whether that has been by accident or design. Nobody, that is, until Jay turns her sights on newly-wed and freshly-widowed Magda Newsam. For Magda’s mother Corinna(…)

The Mermaids Singing

You always remember the first time. Isn’t that what they say about sex? How much more true it is of murder… Up till now, the only serial killers Tony Hill had encountered were safely behind bars. This one’s different — this one’s on the loose. In the northern town of Bradfield four men have been(…)

The Wire in the Blood

Taut, suspenseful and ferociously readable thriller featuring psychological profiler Dr Tony Hill. ‘A terrific chiller from Manchester’s answer to Thomas Harris’ Guardian Nobody moves around inside the messy heads of serial killers like Dr Tony Hill. Now heading up the recently founded National Profiling Task Force, he sets his team an exercise: they are given(…)

The Last Temptation

A twisted killer targeting psychologists has left a grisly trail across Europe. Dr Tony Hill, expert at mapping the minds of murderers, is reluctant to get involved. But then the next victim is much closer to home… Meanwhile, his former partner, DCI Carol Jordan, is working undercover in Berlin, on a dangerous operation to trap(…)

The Torment of Others

Clinical psychologist Dr Tony Hill and Detective Chief Inspector Carol Jordan face the toughest challenge of their careers when they are confronted with an ‘impossible’ series of murders. Back in Bradfield after her traumatic experiences in Berlin, Carol is surprised to find Tony has followed her there to take up a post in the local(…)

Beneath the Bleeding

A city is mourning. Bradfield Victoria’s star midfielder has been murdered, bizarrely poisoned in an apparently motiveless killing. Then a bomb blast rips through the football stadium. Dozens lie dead, many more injured. Is it a terrorist attack or a vendetta against the Vics? Or something even more sinister? As he lies in a hospital(…)

Dead Beat

Dead Beat introduces Kate Brannigan, a female private detective who does for Manchester what V.I. Warshawski has done for Chicago. As a favour, Kate agrees to track down a missing songwriter, Moira Pollock, a search that takes her into some of the seediest parts of Leeds and Bradford. But little does she realize that finding(…)

Kickback

Kate Brannigan, feisty Manchester-based PI, is back, investigating the bizarre case of the missing conservatories. Before Long she’s up to her neck in crooked land deals, mortgage scams, financial chicanery — and murder. But when a favour for a friend puts Kate’s own life in danger, bizarre is not the first word she thinks of…

Fever of the Bone

Meet Tony Hill’s most twisted adversary – a killer with a shopping list of victims, a killer unmoved by youth and innocence, a killer driven by the most perverted of desires. The murder and mutilation of teenager Jennifer Maidment is horrific enough on its own. But it’s not long before Tony realises it’s just the(…)

The Retribution

Tony Hill has had a good run. He and detective Carol Jordan have put away scores of dangerous criminals at a rate that colleagues envy. But there is one serial killer who has shaped and defined their careers, and whose evil surpasses all others: Jacko Vance, ex-celebrity and sociopath whose brilliance and utter lack of(…)

Crack Down

There was only one reason Manchester-based private eye Kate Brannigan was prepared to let her boyfriend help out with the investigation into a car sales fraud — nothing bad could happen. But by now Kate should know that with Richard you have to expect the unexpected. With the unexpected being Richard behind bars, Kate seems(…)

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