Val McDermid - podcast interview transcript

Rob Murphy

Val McDermid, thank you so much for being on Behind the crimes. And this is an honour because this is your writing time, isn’t it? You write between January and April. So. So have you actually managed to get any words down today so far? And how’s how’s it looking?

00:00:14:04 - 00:00:23:21

Val McDermid

Oh, no. It’s a meeting on the phone with somebody. And then I had some of them do some revision work on something else. So I’m not actually written any fresh words today. That will come later.

00:00:23:24 - 00:00:34:13

Rob Murphy

When you try to write, do you have any sort of set number of words or set number of hours that you like to put in when you’re actually starting a first draft, or is it?

00:00:34:14 - 00:00:49:24

Val McDermid

No, I don’t have, any fixed rituals like that. I don’t I don’t say I’ve got to write a thousand words today or I’ve got to work for six hours today. I mean, like, I usually start work in about ten in the morning, ten, 11 in the morning. And then when I work and short chunks of like 20, 25 minutes.

00:00:50:01 - 00:01:05:11

Val McDermid

So I do a bit of writing and then I go and make a cup of coffee, go from you walk at the post office, have a conversation with someone, and then come back to it’s under the day progresses in these sort of 20 minute bursts until I get to the point where I think this is just not working anymore.

00:01:05:11 - 00:01:08:05

Val McDermid

That’s not coming. So I’ll stop.

00:01:08:07 - 00:01:24:01

Rob Murphy

And, well, you’ve been highly successful with your system over the last nearly 40 years. Yeah, incredible isn’t it? And I thoroughly enjoyed reading Silent Bones, which is the latest. It’s the eighth, isn’t it, as a Karen Pirie.

00:01:24:03 - 00:01:24:21

Val McDermid

Yes.

00:01:24:23 - 00:01:43:04

Rob Murphy

Yes. And it’s incredible, isn’t it? You know, you’ve got a body found in a motorway, you’ve got high, you know, elites of men, male only book clubs in Edinburgh. You’ve got an unsolved, mysterious death. You’ve got trips to Germany and everything. Just tell us a bit about where the idea came from.

00:01:43:06 - 00:01:59:07

Val McDermid

From those who came to me in a couple of bits. Really. The first bit was, I’m a part of the Scottish team on Roman Britain quiz. So once a year we get together with all the other teams, and we spend 2 or 3 days in a country house hotel, and we record all the episodes in London.

00:01:59:13 - 00:02:24:20

Val McDermid

So over the years, we got to know each other quite well. And one of the people that I’m very fond of is Stephen, who is the he’s head of the. So let me get this right. Is head of the conservatoire in Birmingham. And he, he was he was telling us about his book club, which has 12 members only, and it’s been going for since the 18th century, I think.

00:02:24:22 - 00:02:45:09

Val McDermid

And there’s a special treat there. They cut up a pineapple. That’s the final ritual as they cut up a pineapple. And he said this. I thought this was quite amusing because Stephen was talking about all these guys from different walks of life, but they only have 12 members. So you have to wait for someone to move or die or give up before you can have a chance of being elected to this.

00:02:45:13 - 00:02:59:01

Val McDermid

I just thought it was interesting and different from what most book clubs are like. And so I thought I used that as a jumping off point for part of the story. And I will say absolutely that no one in Stephen’s book club is going around murdering people.

00:02:59:06 - 00:03:04:05

Rob Murphy

Absolutely no one, quite a few get it in this book, don’t they? There’s quite a quite a few.

00:03:04:07 - 00:03:29:09

Val McDermid

Yeah. What is the place? And the, the, the, the other sort of half of the story, if you like, was a wanted to write something that that was loosely tied into the Scottish referendum for 2014. And so I thought that I could do something that was loosely tied into that, that wasn’t directly tied into political parties or individuals, around the whole referendum thing.

00:03:29:11 - 00:03:38:15

Val McDermid

And so I came up with the idea for the second plot, which is, again, this a book about power and, exploitation.

00:03:38:17 - 00:03:59:19

Rob Murphy

Yes. And there are some. Absolutely. I mean, it’s got all the things you would expect from a Val McDermid, but you’ve got, you know, so many spinning plates. Lots of a plots, B plot, C plots, great characters. It’s, you know, and it’s very fast paced. But what I love so much, I love some of the slow moments as well.

00:03:59:19 - 00:04:19:18

Rob Murphy

You’ve got some great scenes when, Steve Nimmo, Nemo’s family, is been sort of told of him being discovered or when the victim of a historic sexual assault is being talked to. And that sort of slow, just sit in the moment. Writing was beautiful. I thought.

00:04:19:20 - 00:04:20:19

Val McDermid

Okay.

00:04:20:21 - 00:04:27:18

Rob Murphy

Well, how do you go about changing the pace and do all your works have to do that?

00:04:27:20 - 00:04:46:15

Val McDermid

But I don’t really think about it, to be perfectly honest. I go into a scene knowing what feel I want to have from it, and how I, how I get there. I don’t spend a lot of time musing about the technicalities of how I do it. I think, no, I’ve been doing this for almost 40 years.

00:04:46:15 - 00:05:05:16

Val McDermid

But more than that, if you ever got published, and I guess I’ve got some of the basic elements of how you write a book like this down. I don’t have to think to overthink too much about how I structure it. So you you talk a lot about lots and lots of sleepless. I don’t think about it in those terms.

00:05:05:18 - 00:05:23:06

Val McDermid

I write a tell each story in the book, and there’s always more than one story, because in any investigation, there are always periods where you have to hang about and wait for the right person to turn up so you can speak to them, or you’ve got to wait for someone to, to to acknowledge the fact that they’re going to speak to you.

00:05:23:08 - 00:05:45:22

Val McDermid

And sometimes things just take some things, just take a certain length of time, for example, the forensic side of things, you know, they take a certain length of time to do these tests. And so you can have something going on for the boring bits of going on. So, it’s, it’s I think I absorbed this almost, by osmosis when I started reading Agatha Christie.

00:05:45:24 - 00:06:06:00

Val McDermid

So I was about nine years old, and I read The Vicarage, and that was a perfect example of an overarching story, which is, come on, brother, was murder, which is not spoilers. That happens in the first chapter. But then there’s lots of there’s 4 or 5 other subplots. Go on, and they’ll help set up development, pay off that different, different pieces.

00:06:06:02 - 00:06:23:09

Val McDermid

So whenever you come to the end of the chapter, you’re ready to find out what happens next. But what happens next is not the so the what happens next of this particular strand. So I guess I, I became really hooked on the murder of the victim because I didn’t understand why at the time, but I was reading it again and again.

00:06:23:11 - 00:06:31:17

Val McDermid

But what I think is, is this a perfect structure that tells lots of different stories, and that, for me was the story. And definitely.

00:06:31:19 - 00:06:44:12

Rob Murphy

And I’m going to come back to inspiration later on. I’m going to stay with Karen Perry because, I mean, she has been around with us now for more than 20 years, doesn’t she? She first appeared in 2003, in three wasn’t wasn’t it with the.

00:06:44:14 - 00:06:50:23

Val McDermid

Yeah she’s she hasn’t aged 20 of my universe of elastic.

00:06:51:00 - 00:06:53:04

Rob Murphy

She’s not drawing up her pension yet.

00:06:53:09 - 00:06:54:24

Val McDermid

No not yet, not yet.

00:06:55:01 - 00:07:15:10

Rob Murphy

But I 23 I think was a really exciting time for cold cases, wasn’t it? Because that was the time when lots of cold case units were being set up around the country. I’m down here in Bristol, in Avon and Somerset was setting up. There’s that exact time. And why did you want to write, about historic murders?

00:07:15:10 - 00:07:19:03

Rob Murphy

So about the cases that had been unsolved for decades.

00:07:19:05 - 00:07:54:00

Val McDermid

I just had a good idea for a story. So first came about, with with, I mean, first of all, I suppose was, was, this execution, which is standalone. And I was intrigued by this, this, this case, and how it’s going to turn out differently from how people thought it had turned out. I guess it’s quite interesting to look at a case through time because you’re dealing with the investigators now here in the present day, and they bring their techniques and their their understanding of the world to it, but they’re also looking at a world in many respects very different from this.

00:07:54:02 - 00:08:17:02

Val McDermid

You know, we talk about 2003 being a long time ago, and it isn’t terms of the technology, and it is in terms of policing, and it is in terms of what you can do and the assumptions you can make. So I think that, I’m interested in not just waiting in the moment, I’m interested in the way that things have a long tail, because a lot, you know, our lives have a long tail.

00:08:17:04 - 00:08:43:16

Val McDermid

Hopefully. And, you have the chance to go back and, explore your memories of a past period. This is the series I’m working on. The look I’m writing next is 1999, which is a third only Burns novel. So that was 79 and 89 and no. 99. And that allows me to sort of go back into my own experiences at that time and see what I could draw from them.

00:08:43:16 - 00:09:13:09

Val McDermid

Now, looking back at them, cannibalise my own anecdotes and other people’s anecdotes as well. But to take people back to that time, many readers will not remember that time because they were born, not the need for them to stop thinking about these things. And so I think it’s quite interesting for readers to to be taken back in time in terms of the events of the case, but sort of measuring that against how we do it now and what their lives are like now.

00:09:13:11 - 00:09:25:18

Rob Murphy

All that I know you begin to your research, do you what do you tend to write a book first and then work out what research you need? Or do you tend to research first and then think you can take a bit of this? Or is it a blend of the two?

00:09:25:20 - 00:09:50:13

Val McDermid

It’s a blend of the those at the beginning. You the things you need to know before you can start. You know, when I was, I talked about a book called Last Temptation, which is Tony Hill and Kyle Jordan novel, which is set most on the waterways of Europe. So before I could even start to write that, I had to go and spend time in the rivers and canals of Europe and talking to barges and finding out how the lock system works and all those kind of things before I could start writing it.

00:09:50:15 - 00:10:04:12

Val McDermid

And then so there’s other things. The list was I was working on the book. I had to find out exactly how long it takes to drive from Berlin to Cologne. So the things that you say, the things you need to know before you can start, the things you don’t know, you need to know until you get there.

00:10:04:14 - 00:10:14:14

Val McDermid

And that’s sometimes slightly complicated because you need a particular expert. You don’t know anybody in that field. So you have to sufficient amounts to find someone to talk to.

00:10:14:16 - 00:10:25:21

Rob Murphy

And we’re talking with Karen Perry in cold cases. Are there any cold cases that you’ve heard about the read about that have inspired either Karen Perry or any other works, that you’ve written?

00:10:25:23 - 00:10:55:01

Val McDermid

No, really, I try not to rip things from the headlines, by and large, because, I’ve been a journalist for a long time. I understand that, sudden violent death causes all kinds of reverberations through the lives of people connected to the family the friends, workmates, the next door neighbour. Doesn’t matter how much spent time you spent talking to the people involved in the case, you know, you don’t know the whole story, and you have no idea if what you’re writing is going to

00:10:55:01 - 00:11:00:09

Val McDermid

generate a whole set of upset and memories.

00:11:00:09 - 00:11:17:07

Val McDermid

And you don’t, you know, you’re going to be inaccurate or not. And if the case still hasn’t been solved, you don’t know what’s being done behind the scenes. You don’t know who police or forensic scientists are working on behind the scenes. And for all you know, you could just drive in. It’s like a like a juggernaut. And throw an investigation.

00:11:17:09 - 00:11:37:23

Val McDermid

So a spanner in the works of an investigation. So I try not to to focus on real cases. I don’t rip things from the headlines, but obviously that I think the cases that are trends that, you understand, you hear about them, you read about them, you read around them, and sort of pluck out what you can use from that background.

00:11:38:19 - 00:12:01:07

Rob Murphy

So to, to take you back then, I mean, before, before you wrote crime, before you became Val McDermid, crime writer, you were Val McDermid, the schoolgirl and the student, the Oxford student was writing always on the cards. Was it always that Agatha Christie book or other books as well, that that, that made you think that you were going to be a writer?

00:12:01:09 - 00:12:19:08

Val McDermid

I used to read a lot of Houston when I was a child, read everything to get my hands on, but I used to read the Shelley School books, which is a series of books more than like 50 odd books written by Eleanor and Brent Dyer and set in a girls boarding school and in Switzerland and Austria at various times.

00:12:19:10 - 00:12:37:01

Val McDermid

And I just a devoured those books and I learned a lot from them. One of the things I learned from them is how to write proper series fiction, because just about let you read the Famous Five or something like that. And it doesn’t matter when you drop into that series, you don’t have to know anything that’s come before or when it comes off, though, because nothing actually changes.

00:12:37:07 - 00:12:39:18

Val McDermid

Everything takes place in the same symptom or somewhere.

00:12:39:24 - 00:12:42:11

Rob Murphy

Julian is always the same in the fingers.

00:12:42:13 - 00:13:04:05

Val McDermid

Exactly. And George is never going to grow up. But the Charlie School books, the next book covers a term or a year in the life of the school, and events have consequences. Sometimes several books later. And I thought this was interesting because you want to read the books to find out what happens next in a wider sense, rather than just the immediate context of that book.

00:13:04:07 - 00:13:20:18

Val McDermid

Borrowing them from the library made life very difficult because you could never get the next one in the series. That was book number 23. Then it would be number 47 in the book, too. So you had to do a lot of detective work to get your head round all of it. But one of the girls at the Chalet School grows up to be a writer.

00:13:20:20 - 00:13:37:00

Val McDermid

She writes girls school stories, which were not considered to be of any metal, but at the time was just what she did. And, I and one of the books, she gets a letter from her publisher on the letter from her publisher contains a cheque, and there was a moment of light going on in my head.

00:13:37:00 - 00:13:53:07

Val McDermid

Could she get paid for doing this? I could do that. I can tell lies. I can make up stories. And so from that point on, that was that was the only thing I ever wanted to be. And, you know, I hadn’t then had sort of the 20 years of being locked up by friends and family going, oh, yeah, you’re going to be a writer.

00:13:53:07 - 00:13:54:18

Val McDermid

Kosher.

00:13:54:20 - 00:13:56:21

Rob Murphy

Well, who’s laughing now? But,

00:13:56:23 - 00:14:08:02

Val McDermid

Well, yeah, but I mean, I grew up in a working class small town in Scotland, which wasn’t really sort of, background that most writers had in those days. These days, indeed.

00:14:08:04 - 00:14:13:12

Rob Murphy

Yes. And the library was important to you, wasn’t it? I think, yes. Is that right?

00:14:13:14 - 00:14:26:05

Val McDermid

Yeah. I mean, we lived opposite to the main library in Kirkcaldy, which is a really good library, very well stocked. And I was oh, that was pretty much my, my home from home every day after school and go and change my books. Yeah.

00:14:26:10 - 00:14:41:16

Rob Murphy

And you and you were fast tracked, weren’t you, through school. And then, you hold a, for want of a better phrase, a badge of honour. When you first, Scottish State school, student at Saint Hilda’s, is that right? Yes.

00:14:41:16 - 00:14:42:01

Val McDermid

That’s right.

00:14:42:01 - 00:14:47:08

Rob Murphy

Yeah, yeah. When did you discover that on on entry. Or is that something you found out later on in life?

00:14:47:10 - 00:15:02:17

Val McDermid

I’ve found. I did not know about it till I got there, but up till I went for my interview. Really? The principal said they’ve not formally taken anyone from the Scottish State School before. So both books I we started I mean, I was 16 and I was girls. Yeah.

00:15:02:19 - 00:15:16:09

Rob Murphy

And and when you, when you were at university, did that help you decide further that you might want to be, a writer? Because I guess people there go off into every sphere possible. They.

00:15:16:11 - 00:15:39:19

Val McDermid

Yeah. I mean, I wanted to be a writer, but I also understood that, people like me, people from my background was it was no money behind them, no safety net. You had to have a proper job to support you until you could actually start earning a living as a place of fiction. And so I, I went to them going to the career sphere, to in Oxford and Raleigh was really boring jobs.

00:15:39:21 - 00:16:04:04

Val McDermid

But, you know, 9 to 5 and essentially the same every day. I can’t do that. And, I spoke to the person on the journalism table and I thought, this is okay, I could do this because, you know, you don’t have to do the same story every day. You write different stories every day. And it’s it’s not 9 to 5, and it’s much less like to drive mud report also very, very low boredom threshold.

00:16:04:07 - 00:16:08:21

Val McDermid

Yes. You know, like I thought my husband was a shop. Just give me a break. Yeah.

00:16:08:23 - 00:16:11:14

Rob Murphy

So you, you train down here in the West Country in Devon?

00:16:11:16 - 00:16:17:14

Val McDermid

That’s right. Yeah, yeah. And plus and South Devon at times. And then there were some independent.

00:16:17:16 - 00:16:26:20

Rob Murphy

And with silent bones. I’m so pleased you’ve got a storyline involving shorthand. Thank you. Only there were more. Which did you do, Pitman or t line?

00:16:26:22 - 00:16:43:17

Val McDermid

T line, C line. T line. Teacher. The inimitable Mrs.. First, just to be asked to listen to the news being read by Angela Rippon because they speak at about 182 minutes. So it’s really good to practice on inimitable.

00:16:43:17 - 00:16:52:14

Rob Murphy

I think every short it comes with the territory, isn’t it? With every. My shorthand teacher was inimitable. And did you get your hundred boxes?

00:16:52:16 - 00:16:53:16

Val McDermid

I got 120.

00:16:53:17 - 00:16:56:16

Rob Murphy

You got 120 words a minute. That is outrageous.

00:16:56:18 - 00:17:00:08

Val McDermid

The training scheme. You had to 120.

00:17:00:10 - 00:17:08:13

Rob Murphy

I was fifth time to get 100. I, I yeah, I just couldn’t get. Did you go to sleep with sort t line outlines going round in your head, in your mind.

00:17:08:13 - 00:17:31:04

Val McDermid

No, no. Fortunately that did not keep me awake at night. But my t line outlines were quite idiosyncratic. And when I did the 120 exam, person who was looking at this from the, wrote or I say contacted, my shorthand teacher said, is this actually her shorthand? And Mrs. First had to say yes. Yes, only she can read it, but it’s her shorthand.

00:17:31:08 - 00:17:48:19

Rob Murphy

Yeah. I was laughing away when I was reading that in the book about t line. And so that’s just something maybe you and I and about thousands of other people will get this stuff anyway. But so from there, you, you went on to work, for the national newspapers up in the north. The north of England didn’t, it was.

00:17:49:00 - 00:17:53:18

Val McDermid

Just a couple of years in Scotland. First, I worked for the Daily Record in Glasgow, and then I moved down to Manchester.

00:17:53:23 - 00:18:00:20

Rob Murphy

Can you just describe what those times were like? Just plop us in that world? This was, 1970s.

00:18:00:22 - 00:18:24:08

Val McDermid

Yeah. Well, the late 70s, early 80s onwards. I quit in 91. But so it was, it was a, it was a man’s world. Yeah. You know, I mean, when I worked on the records that only three women news reporters, the whole team, but I went to Manchester newspapers, employed 160 journalists, of whom three were women.

00:18:24:10 - 00:18:41:00

Val McDermid

Wow. One on each type of one for the member, one for the sentimental, one for the Sunday people. Right. I, I was at one point I was bothered as the chaplain, the shop steward, basically for the journalists. One of my colleagues was leaving, so I knew we had a job vacancy coming up. Because we were a Sunday paper.

00:18:41:00 - 00:18:57:00

Val McDermid

On Saturdays, we would stuff up like a daily paper. So it was. You employ a lot of what we called Saturday casuals. And there were people who mostly worked for other papers in the region. Under one particular. She’d been doing lots shifts for us on Saturdays, and she would also be punting stories to us during the week. And she was really good.

00:18:57:02 - 00:19:15:11

Val McDermid

Went and spoke to the editor. I said, you know, we’ve got this job coming up. I think we should offer it to this young woman who comes in for us on the Saturdays. And, you know, she’s really good self-starter. And he looked at me with a sort of blank expression and said, but we’ve already got a woman.

00:19:15:13 - 00:19:18:22

Rob Murphy

It’s outrageous, isn’t it? It’s outrageous.

00:19:18:24 - 00:19:24:20

Val McDermid

I mean, I tell us people just don’t believe me. As if this was the Dark Ages. It was about 1985.

00:19:24:22 - 00:19:29:01

Rob Murphy

Yeah. I mean, it was 40 years ago. But it’s a generational shift, isn’t it?

00:19:29:01 - 00:19:29:18

Val McDermid

Yeah, yeah.

00:19:29:23 - 00:19:36:17

Rob Murphy

A generational shift you worked up in, you was the, bureau chief. What, you in the north of England?

00:19:36:18 - 00:19:36:24

Val McDermid

Yeah.

00:19:36:24 - 00:19:53:23

Rob Murphy

Eventually here. And did any. And what? This is a crime podcast. What crimes did you come across there? And just what were your thoughts? How did you approach dealing with families, courts, police?

00:19:54:00 - 00:20:20:03

Val McDermid

Well, I was working on a Sunday paper by that stage. So it’s a very different job from being a daily paper reporter. So you say you go out on a job and the last thing you want is to see another journalist, because that means it’s not an exclusive anymore. But we did cover right from the early 80s, so I can remember a bunch of us standing and, one of my colleagues kitchens in Leeds, nursing cups of coffee very early in the morning, the day that, Peter Sutcliffe had been picked up.

00:20:20:05 - 00:20:21:09

Rob Murphy

Oh, wow. Okay.

00:20:21:11 - 00:20:22:00

Val McDermid

And so.

00:20:22:05 - 00:20:23:01

Rob Murphy

81 was.

00:20:23:03 - 00:20:44:18

Val McDermid

81. Yeah. So we were all thrown straight into that to get the background ready for when the case came to trial. And background as were always the really, complicated area to get because you always have to walk that narrow line between not doing something that could potentially endanger the court case and cause a contempt of court.

00:20:44:20 - 00:21:05:13

Val McDermid

But also making sure you got something nailed down for the for the paper. And I was the story of a friend of mine. Who worked for the Daily Mail at the time. We were all trying to get Sonia Sutcliffe, you know, Peter Sutcliffe’s wife, to talk to us, and she was just. She was lost almost none of us could get anywhere with her.

00:21:05:15 - 00:21:22:15

Val McDermid

And my eagle eyed friend working for the Daily Mail noticed that her father had a lovely rose garden in front of the house, and she had horses. So she turned up one day on the doorstep with a jar of gold blend and a sack of horse manure for the roses, and she got in.

00:21:22:17 - 00:21:24:00

Rob Murphy

The jeep because the horse manure.

00:21:24:06 - 00:21:43:16

Val McDermid

Version you the. And later on, when it was all all came on top. Afterwards Liverpool was a lot. So there’s lots of people shouting and complaining about the way the TSB covered jobs that journalists had done. The Daily Mail editor called his journalists into and officers said, did you did you pay anyone for that? And did you take them out to dinner?

00:21:43:19 - 00:21:50:17

Val McDermid

Did you probably should go hunting a couple sacks of horse manure to blend this. It’s great.

00:21:50:19 - 00:22:00:24

Rob Murphy

I mean, when you were there as well, I mean, you had some really dark stuff happening. I mean, you the world is full of dark stuff, isn’t it? But, you had Lockerbie, didn’t you? Yeah.

00:22:01:01 - 00:22:20:17

Val McDermid

Luckily I was. I mean, I was there that night. I got the sun as soon as the plane blew up. I was the London night desk was on the phones and get up to Lockerbie, so I went, that’s not something I really like to think about. Talk about much. Because it was, it was very difficult.

00:22:20:19 - 00:22:23:04

Val McDermid

Yes. Very different.

00:22:23:04 - 00:22:46:08

Val McDermid

And I think, I mean, in the space of six months, I had Lockerbie, the M1 plane crash, Hillsborough. I kind of got to the point where I thought I can’t I can’t do this anymore. I can’t I can’t do this because it’s just taking too much out of me. So a lot of me really to do this properly, you’ve finally got to do one of two things.

00:22:46:11 - 00:23:07:18

Val McDermid

You either build a wall, set yourself behind the wall, and just cut off from the human, the human element of what you’re doing. And don’t think about it and don’t. Well, for what it is, what it means, and that has one outcome. And then you become pretty much desensitised, or you allow yourself to be open to.

00:23:07:20 - 00:23:12:08

Val McDermid

And that has the opposite, element of taking too much out of you.

00:23:12:13 - 00:23:26:20

Rob Murphy

Would you say some of this has, some of your experience here has so informed, has informed your writing? You know, you’re writing about police officers who were at the absolute, you know, who see nothing. You see absolutely everything.

00:23:26:22 - 00:23:50:06

Val McDermid

Yeah. So I think I have a probably a stronger understanding than the average person of of what that experiences. You know, there were times when I was a trainee journalist, that we’d be on the scene before the police on a serious crime. And, so, you know, you usually got at the sharp at the, yeah.

00:23:50:08 - 00:24:12:09

Val McDermid

I mean, there’s a huge pressure on journalists to get the stories. I mean, my my experience of journalism and as well, before people were tapping phones and that sort of thing. But there was always a real pressure to get the inside story, get the story that nobody else has. And that was how careers were built. And it’s tough.

00:24:12:11 - 00:24:27:07

Val McDermid

And I think that many of us who who were journalists lot period are probably probably got some of some sort of level of PTSD from the things that we had to do, the things that we saw, the things the stories we heard, the stories we saw.

00:24:27:09 - 00:24:32:03

Rob Murphy

And and so it’s at this time you were doing this, but you were also writing, weren’t you?

00:24:32:06 - 00:24:32:24

Val McDermid

I was, yes.

00:24:33:05 - 00:24:50:12

Rob Murphy

So, I mean, how on earth did you combine, this extremely difficult, competitive, but also quite exciting job demanding with creating another career for yourself, doing something so creative and artistic as well.

00:24:50:14 - 00:25:10:22

Val McDermid

What was that? Was kind of, that was my outlet, I suppose. That was where I could, I could, write what I wanted to write and, and create characters that I wanted to spend time with, as opposed to the characters I had to spend time with. And that for me was, was, was was a different, different frame of mind.

00:25:10:24 - 00:25:23:03

Val McDermid

I was in charge, you know, I wasn’t going to be blindsided by something else. And, I could also create characters that I quite enjoyed spending time with and exploring their world, through the lens of my experience.

00:25:23:05 - 00:25:29:18

Rob Murphy

And you so. And your writing. So funny as well. You can have, I guess, a lightness of touch with it in a way that perhaps the day job does.

00:25:29:19 - 00:25:53:02

Val McDermid

Yeah. For you, I mean, you you don’t get very many jokes. And the story about Hillsborough, for example, that would have been crass. And you know, but but you know yourself from, from working with people and emergency services, from first responders, that kind of thing, that sometimes the only way to get through a shift is to start cracking the terrible jokes.

00:25:53:04 - 00:26:10:18

Val McDermid

And the concept of too soon does not apply to first responders, you know? It’s it’s it’s another way of putting a barrier between yourself and the, the the humanity, the destruction of people’s humanity and destruction of the lines is frequently witnessed to you.

00:26:10:20 - 00:26:28:18

Rob Murphy

So how long did it did it take for you to build up enough, well, money deals to to be able to give up the day job and just say, I’m going to be a writer. That’s what I’m going to do. And and also, why did you decide to write crime? You know, you’re such a talented writer.

00:26:28:18 - 00:26:32:10

Rob Murphy

Obviously, you could have written in any genre that. Why? Why crime?

00:26:32:12 - 00:27:01:08

Val McDermid

Well, I love crime. I fell in love with Agatha Christie early on, as I said, but I from there I moved on to read, you know, all the other great gold news writers and then moved to the 1950s into the present day. And I there’s a lot of crime fiction and cookery library. But then when I went to university, just down the road from my college was Jeremy’s ten bookshop, and Jeremy’s Turnkey bookshop was basically a paperback bookshop, and everything was £0.10.

00:27:01:10 - 00:27:21:11

Val McDermid

And you could you could buy 20 book and read it. And if you forgot to get rid of it, you just took it back and got five feet. Yeah. So I just I just read everything. Every green penguin, every punk crime, that I could get my hands on and and I that was my first love. Whatever else I was reading, I was also always had a crime novel on the go.

00:27:21:13 - 00:27:51:15

Val McDermid

And I think although we were not studying the crime novel, because that was very I always noticed when I was in the tutors study of tutors rooms that they have sort of tucked away on the shelves of you. What penguin classic crime spines. So it’s fairly respectable to read it, but not to write about it. And I love the I love the sense of, of, working towards a story that has a conclusion, you know, at the time article, I think in the 80s, the 90s, a lot of literary fiction didn’t so much.

00:27:51:17 - 00:28:21:01

Val McDermid

And it just stopped. And you’d get to the end of a 400 page novel. There’s like und und. Well, well, I spent a lot of time reading it back then when there’s really incredibly cheated the narrative sense. I think that’s changed quite a lot in recent years. So many good writers of what you would call not well, not crime fiction, who’ve, I think brilliant stories with marvellous development and conclusion.

00:28:21:03 - 00:28:37:11

Val McDermid

You know, so I mean, I would, I would bow to no one in my respect for that. Ali Smith, for example. But I got frustrated by, by reading so many books that that just seemed to me to be unfinished. And so, I, I thought so I stuck with crime. Yes. And I tried to write.

00:28:37:11 - 00:28:43:00

Val McDermid

I tried to try to write the English novel after I graduated, and it was truly terrible. Trust me. It’s truly terrible.

00:28:43:00 - 00:28:43:12

Rob Murphy

Have you kept.

00:28:43:12 - 00:29:03:02

Val McDermid

It a half kept or keep it to remind myself how badly I can write? It will never see the light of day. You know Michael Rowbotham, the Australian crime writer. He’s just took a picture of his bottom drawer from 20 years ago, the first book he wrote, and reworked it, and I read it. It’s really good, but I can’t think of any way that reworking would salvage my first novel.

00:29:03:04 - 00:29:18:04

Val McDermid

But I, I wrote three Lindsay Gordon novels, which were I wrote for the Women’s Press. Yes. It was a small indie, feminist press. And they were paperback originals at a time when paperbacks were not reviewed.

00:29:18:06 - 00:29:19:09

Rob Murphy

Well, okay.

00:29:19:11 - 00:29:43:05

Val McDermid

Well, the book, the books went out there and they found the readership from word of mouth and from booksellers, put it in the customers hands and said, I think you’ll like this. And I did okay. But I mean, there was no money in it, really. And the I mean, the fact that the, the never been out of print and the fact that Harpercollins are relaunching them, this year, tells you that there was something there that people liked.

00:29:43:07 - 00:30:03:00

Val McDermid

But I knew I was going to ever make a living doing that. So, I thought I also wanted to write something very different. So challenge myself as a writer because, you know, Lindsay Gordon’s of Scottish lesbian journalists, I thought, I can do more than that. And so I thought I wanted to write about a different character.

00:30:03:02 - 00:30:10:03

Val McDermid

So I wrote a book, Private Eye, based in Manchester, and she’s straight and she’s most of the things I am not.

00:30:10:05 - 00:30:11:07

Rob Murphy

That’s Kate Branigan.

00:30:11:09 - 00:30:36:07

Val McDermid

That’s great. Branigan. And I wrote the first Brannigan, and, my agent said, well, we could shop this around, you know, mainstream publishers maybe get you a decent deal. And we went to see Julia Wisdom at Harpercollins. And she liked books, and she said, let’s I go to book deal. And I went on a brutal road, went home on the train.

00:30:36:09 - 00:30:49:06

Val McDermid

And I literally wrote on the back of an envelope, figured out that was if I could write two books a year, I could pay the mortgage and feed myself. And so that was what I thought. That’s enough. I can if I can do that, then I’ll do that.

00:30:49:08 - 00:31:00:06

Rob Murphy

That must have been hard years. But eventually, I guess. Yeah, yeah. When did it feel that actually this is I can I can actually live I can, I can, I can, I can flourish here.

00:31:00:08 - 00:31:32:19

Val McDermid

Well, this was 1991, and I quit the day job, and I think that for me, the breakout book was, I’m in singing because I won the gold dagger, much to my astonishment. And, that broke me out into a wider audience, not just in the UK, but also, my foreign sales were much better because foreign publishers, you know, in the days before you could just press a button and get Google Translate or change to translate the, foreign foreign titles without taking a gamble.

00:31:32:21 - 00:31:52:09

Val McDermid

You didn’t know who was going to work for you or not. But so a lot of foreign publishers would buy up the ones that won words on the basis. That’s probably a good book. Yes. And so I got I got published in markets I hadn’t been published in before. And also sort of cemented my position in the markets where I already was being published.

00:31:52:14 - 00:32:02:00

Val McDermid

So that was the book that really made a, made a difference to me. But it was those two, three books after that, before I was even making the same money as it was when I was a journalist.

00:32:02:00 - 00:32:05:19

Rob Murphy

Really. So we’re talking about five years. Are we off to give it up before?

00:32:05:21 - 00:32:24:06

Val McDermid

Yeah, probably more like six, seven years. Yeah. Wow. It was I mean, the first couple of years after I quit, the day job was, skint, you know, I, gave up buying books, gave up buying CDs. Went to the library a lot. Made homemade homemade wine, even, you know.

00:32:24:08 - 00:32:25:05

Rob Murphy

What was that, like.

00:32:25:07 - 00:32:31:07

Val McDermid

Above it? Well, some of the very good, actually. Also, dancers make very good wine.

00:32:31:09 - 00:32:50:00

Rob Murphy

So you’ve had five series really, haven’t you? We’ve talked about Karen Gordon, Kate Branigan, Tony Hill and, Karen Jackson Jordan and, Ali Burns as well. Yeah. So, you know, the and in total, is it more than 50 books now includes, you know, fiction and.

00:32:50:00 - 00:32:54:01

Val McDermid

Non-fiction and children’s book and things.

00:32:55:17 - 00:33:02:07

Val McDermid

Non crime fiction. I mean, there’s, there’s Queen Macbeth. Yeah. As well. So yeah, I mean, it must be about that.

00:33:02:09 - 00:33:11:22

Rob Murphy

Prolific, truly prolific a book that I absolutely adore. And you can see how well-thumbed it is. Here is your forensics book, which is, 2014. It came out.

00:33:12:02 - 00:33:14:20

Val McDermid

And I know some of those probably will update by now.

00:33:14:22 - 00:33:27:06

Rob Murphy

I don’t know. Well, I mean, a lot of it. I mean, part of it, I mean, it’s just a great read as well, isn’t it? Because you go into the history of, toxicology or entomology or, finger fingerprinting as well, or that kind of.

00:33:27:08 - 00:33:43:14

Val McDermid

A said, I said when, when, when they asked me to do it, I said, I thought the only way I could, I could make it work for myself was if I could talk to people who did it for real. Yeah. So to get their stories as well and their experiences, as well as getting the sort of factual use, the history of use is.

00:33:43:14 - 00:34:14:09

Val McDermid

No. I think, you know, for me, the first DNA appearance in the UK court was 1986, which was the year before my first novel came out. And I kind of feel that my career has gone in lockstep with the development, the forensic, over the years, because I’ve got a lot of friends who are, you know, forensic scientists from, you know, Sue black, who is the queen of forensic anthropology, these victims who does the DNA of drugs and fire and explosions, and people like that have become part of my, my friendship circle.

00:34:14:15 - 00:34:32:01

Val McDermid

So I get they’ll they’ll say they’ll tell me about something they’re working on, or new, a new technique, and I’ll stick it in the next book if I, if it’s appropriate. Yeah. The other ones overstepped the mark, though, because, Sue told me this this, this fascinating piece of information,

00:34:32:01 - 00:34:41:08

Val McDermid

you know, cells in your body regenerate all of after seven years, your body is completely new by except for one tiny bone in your ear.

00:34:41:10 - 00:34:58:09

Val McDermid

And it’s such a small bone that for a long time, they didn’t even count it. When they’re counting the number of bones in the human body. But that bone stays the same from when you’re in your mother’s womb to when you die. And so if you analyse that bone, you can tell where your mother was living when she was pregnant with you.

00:34:58:13 - 00:35:00:23

Rob Murphy

You can. Is that because if the water or something like.

00:35:01:00 - 00:35:19:06

Val McDermid

The diatoms in the water and another chemical such as the atmosphere, and I just like that she told me that, I said, wow, that’s amazing. And I, I shoehorned into the next book and, since she rang me and said, you might have waited till I published a paper.

00:35:19:08 - 00:35:43:09

Rob Murphy

And when you were studying these, speaking to your scientists, I mean, did you have what thoughts did you have about some of these cases that you were learning about or had perhaps heard about or knew about in the back of your mind, have done a bit of reading about, but actually we’re learning about more because I’ve got a real belief that oftentimes fact is strange, that if true, true stories are sometimes so extraordinary.

00:35:43:09 - 00:35:51:16

Rob Murphy

If you were to present it as a work of fiction, you would say, no, that that couldn’t happen. Yeah. Are there any cases like that, along.

00:35:51:18 - 00:36:17:17

Val McDermid

With all the other ones that always stuck in my mind because it involved different elements of forensic science? As the book Roxton case in the 1930s. But Cluxton was a doctor, a Parsi doctor who moved to England. So, so himself was a GP in Lancashire. And he murdered his wife and thus the seven kill on the case was extraordinary.

00:36:17:18 - 00:36:40:09

Val McDermid

So many, so many aspects. He he he murdered them. He dismembered them, he wrapped them up in newspaper. The bits of the bits and pieces of newspaper, a week or so went by, and then he drove off into the countryside and put them in the fast flowing stream, thinking, this is that although the trial was carried out to see, you know, no one will ever hear from them again.

00:36:40:11 - 00:37:07:00

Val McDermid

And what happened was it was sort of, so, so stent walking, isn’t it? Well, I’m walking, so an arm sticking out of the river water up to a newspaper, being a good person to jump down the hill to find the police station. So it’s like there’s something there’s a body in the river, and they found this body parts, in the in the river up to the newspaper.

00:37:07:02 - 00:37:24:21

Val McDermid

They were taken off, to because they’re found over the border in Scotland. They’ll take it off to Edinburgh and Glasgow to be examined by pathologists. And at first they thought because they’d been on the boat for a while, the various, depredations on them. This is this. They thought. They thought it was a man and a woman.

00:37:24:22 - 00:37:45:05

Val McDermid

This there’s two bodies. It’s a man and a woman. So looking for a man, a woman who have gone missing recently. And actually having a meeting that the scientists were all having a meeting, talking about the case, trying to discuss with the world. And one of the lab technicians, Russell, said there’s three breasts. Right. And then I realised it was actually two women.

00:37:45:07 - 00:38:03:22

Val McDermid

Right. Part of that, part of the reason. So this is the the one of the women, the wife of the this is a very heavyset Joel, but she looked quite masculine compared to a woman’s jaw. But one of the other things that was tracked it down was the newspapers that there were putting at a particular, a particular edition of the this one.

00:38:04:03 - 00:38:31:01

Val McDermid

Newspapers had several local editions, and this one had a stop press box. And this was only in a very limited area of Lancaster. So the new they were looking for two women who had gone missing in Lancaster, and the net was closing tighter and tighter and tighter. And he was eventually he was hanged, obviously. Eventually. And the I think that’s a that’s one that’s often intrigued by what happened to the children.

00:38:31:03 - 00:38:40:12

Rob Murphy

Yes. It’s it’s extraordinary. It’s an extraordinary piece of work. Psychology. Anthropology.

00:38:40:14 - 00:39:07:18

Val McDermid

Oh, yeah. The other thing that was important in the Wrexham case, was, was, was, it was the first time that, bugs had been used in the court case, entomology. Years later, when I was doing that, the forensics book, I was, I was at the Natural History Museum talking to French entomologist, and he said, come with me, I’ll show you some historic maggots.

00:39:07:20 - 00:39:22:22

Val McDermid

And they had some they have some maggots there and a little plastic bottle from the Roxton case, because you can date. How long a body is since body died, but which which flies are predating on it? And what was what state of development? That that.

00:39:23:01 - 00:39:35:17

Rob Murphy

Yes. Yes. It’s extraordinary. It is, absolutely extraordinary. So you you’re writing a present to Lindsay Gordon’s have been reissued this year?

00:39:35:19 - 00:39:36:19

Val McDermid

Yes. Oh, yeah.

00:39:36:21 - 00:39:41:14

Rob Murphy

You’ve got you’re writing a book with your partner and you’ve got another.

00:39:41:16 - 00:39:44:01

Val McDermid

Addition to the editorial notes or not.

00:39:44:04 - 00:39:46:00

Rob Murphy

And you’ve got another. Only burns.

00:39:46:02 - 00:39:47:10

Val McDermid

Yeah. I’m writing about this this year.

00:39:47:16 - 00:39:49:14

Rob Murphy

So that’ll be out in October.

00:39:49:20 - 00:39:51:15

Val McDermid

No, it’ll actually be out next year, I think.

00:39:51:16 - 00:39:52:06

Rob Murphy

Okay.

00:39:52:08 - 00:39:58:03

Val McDermid

Because there’s a certain sense of, I’m always going to almost new to prolific.

00:39:58:05 - 00:40:00:05

Rob Murphy

So you can try and slow your releases.

00:40:00:06 - 00:40:11:14

Val McDermid

Well but I will say slow down a bit. Now, you know, you can order. It’s not over. But what else would I do? Yeah. You know what partners this is just us. You know, you can’t retire you because you’ve got no hobbies. Yes.

00:40:11:16 - 00:40:15:13

Rob Murphy

Well, aren’t you in the fun loving crime writers as well?

00:40:15:15 - 00:40:23:05

Val McDermid

Yeah, that’s not really a hobby. I mean, that’s that’s a call. And and and people ask us to come, they call us up, we come.

00:40:23:07 - 00:40:27:12

Rob Murphy

There you go. There you appear. What what what instruments do you do? You sing and I sing.

00:40:27:12 - 00:40:28:02

Val McDermid

Yes.

00:40:28:04 - 00:40:30:18

Rob Murphy

That’s Mark Billingham as well, isn’t it? In this. Yeah.

00:40:30:18 - 00:40:38:06

Val McDermid

He plays rhythm guitar and I, I get a shot of playing the bass at one point in the, in the performance.

00:40:38:08 - 00:40:45:11

Rob Murphy

Brilliant. Okay. Val McDermid I could talk to you all day, but you’ve got about 100 books to write up.

00:40:45:13 - 00:40:46:08

Val McDermid

Yeah.

00:40:46:10 - 00:41:00:04

Rob Murphy

It’s been an absolute joy of being with you. Thank you so much for your time today. And, I can’t recommend, Silent Bones highly enough. Or forensics as well, which is also terrific. And, I really do appreciate your time. Thank you so much for being with us.

00:41:00:06 - 00:41:00:22

Val McDermid

The pleasure.