Val McDermid Bio

Val McDermid came from a working-class family in Kirkcaldy in Fife, Scotland, and studied English at St Hilda’s College in Oxford. She was the first student admitted to the college from a Scottish state school and one of the youngest undergraduates to be accepted. After she graduated, she became a journalist and began her career as a playwright. Her first success came in 1987 with Report for Murder: The First Lindsay Gordon Mystery. 

Val McDermid is best known for her series of novels based around clinical psychologist Dr. Tony Hill and his team at the police department. 

She was inducted into the prestigious Detection Club in 2020 and in 2010 won the CWA Diamond Dagger for her lifetime contribution to crime writing in the English language. McDermid co-founded the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival and the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, which are part of the Harrogate International Festivals. In 2016, she captained a team of St Hilda’s alumni to win the Christmas University Challenge.

McDermid has received the LA Times Book of the Year Award and was inducted into the ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards Hall of Fame in 2009. In 2011 she received the Lambda Literary Foundation Pioneer Award and in 2016 received the Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction Award at the Theakston’s Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival. In 2017, she received the DIVA Literary Prize for Crime.

She has served as a judge for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Man Booker Prize, as well as sitting as Chair for the Wellcome Book Prize in 2017.

In 2011, Val McDermid was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Sunderland, and in 2017 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2025 she was also awarded an honorary degree from the University of Edinburgh. She is also an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda’s College in Oxford, and a Professor at the University of Otago in New Zealand.

Today, McDermid still lives in Fife and Edinburgh with her partner Jo Sharp, a professor of geography at the University of Glasgow and Geographer Royal for Scotland from 2022. 

Life as a journalist 

Val McDermid had always wanted to write, but was told it was impossible to make a living from writing and would need to have a suitable job. This propelled her into journalism where she spent two years training in Devon, and winning several awards, including Trainee Journalist of the Year. She then spent 14 years writing for national British newspapers in Manchester and Glasgow, and holding a role as the Northern Bureau Chief on a national Sunday tabloid. 

Turning to writing

While holding down these roles, McDermid turned her hand to novel writing. She was 21 and while the novel was rejected by every publishing house in London, a friend who was an actor thought it would make a good play. Her first novel was turned into a script which she presented to the director of the Plymouth Theatre Company. He decided it was a perfect fit for a season he had planned. She later adapted the play, Like a Happy Ending, for BBC radio, and was commissioned to write another play for a touring company in Lincolnshire and Humberside. 

While Val didn’t have the practical skills to make a success of writing drama, she turned her hand to writing crime novels because she had always enjoyed reading the genre. She had been inspired by the new wave of American female crime writers and wondered if she could do something similar in a UK setting. 

She published Report for Murder in 1987 and gave up her day job in 1991, making her living through novel writing ever since. 

Val McDermid published works 

Val McDermid’s work falls into five series:

• Lindsay Gordon series

• Kate Brannigan series

• Tony Hill and DCI Carol Jordan series

• DCI Karen Pirie series

• Allie Burns series

She has also published several standalone novels, short story collections, non-fiction books and children’s books. 

McDermid also writes for the British press and often has broadcasting spots on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio Scotland. 

Crime fiction adapted for television

Val McDermid’s Tony Hill and DCI Carol Jordan series was adapted for television and ran from 2002 – 2008 as Wire in the Blood. In interviews, McDermid has said that the character of Jacko Vance, a TV celebrity with a secret lust for torture, murder and under-age girls is based on her direct personal experience interviewing Jimmy Savile. 

The television series Karen Pirie was adapted from her Inspector Karen Pirie series and has been running since 2022.