One of the UK’s most accomplished and respected novelists, number one bestseller Val McDermid has sold over 19 million books to date across the globe and her work has been translated into more than 40 languages.

She has written five series of crime novels including eight featuring cold case detective Karen Pirie, with Karen now starring in a major ITV series and eleven books with clinical psychologist Dr Tony Hill and DCI Carol Jordan which were adapted for television as Wire in the Blood, starring Robson Green and Hermione Norris. Val has also published several award-winning standalone novels, books of non-fiction, short story collections and a children’s picture book, My Granny is a Pirate. Her new Karen Pirie novel, Silent Bones, publishes in October 2025.

Val has won multiple international awards, including the CWA Gold Dagger, the LA Times Book of the Year Award and the Grand Prix des Romans D’Aventure. She is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Edinburgh and has been a judge for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Man Booker Prize, as well as chairing the Wellcome Book Prize in 2017. She is the recipient of eight honorary doctorates, is an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda’s College, Oxford and a Professor at the University of Otago in New Zealand. Val is also lead singer of the

Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers, a rock band who have performed at Glastonbury. She lives in Edinburgh and the East Neuk of Fife.