Mystery Women Authors
Val McDermid
Biography
Val McDermid grew up
in a Scottish mining community then read English at Oxford. She was a journalist
for sixteen years and is now a full-time writer living outside Manchester. Val
won this year's Golden Dagger Award given by the British Crime Writers' Association
for Best Crime Novel of the year for her book The Mermaids Singing.
She has also written 5 crime novels featuring Lindsay Gordon, 5 mystery novels
featuring Kate Brannigan, 2 crime thrillers featuring Dr Tony Hill and contributes
weekly Crime Fiction Reviews to the Manchester Evening News.
The covers shown below may not be the cover of the actual publisher as there seems to be a great difference between UK and USA editions.
Books
Kate Brannigan Mysteries
To find out all about Kate Brannigan click here
Start Struck - a new Kate Brannigan mystery
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 than her Thai boxing kit.
Soon, however, offstage dramas overshadow the fictional storylines, culminating in the unscripted murder of the selfstyled 'Seer to the Stars', and Kate finds herself with more questions than answers. What's more, her tame hacker has found virtual love, her process server keeps getting arrested, and the ever-reliable Dennis has had the temerity to get himself charged with murder. Nobody told her there'd be days like these… Star Struck, the sixth Kate Brannigan novel has been awarded France's prestigious Grand Prix des Romans d'Adventure.
Published Harper Collins 1998 (Available in UK and Australia )
Kick Back
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...
Published Vista 1993 (Available in UK and Australia)
Dead
Beat
Off-beat Manchester private eye Kate Brannigan reluctantly agrees to help a singer in the British rock scene search for a missing lyricist and finds herself deep in the world of rock and murder.
Published Harper Collins 1994 (Available in UK and Australia)
Crack Down
When
Kate and her boyfriend Richard, a rock music critic, go undercover to get the
goods on a car dealership fraud, she isn't prepared for the volcano of trouble
that erupts, sending Richard to jail. Now, Kate's only got three days to prove
Richard is an innocent victim, caught in the driver's seat of a dangerous theft
ring that takes no prisoners. (From Amazon.com synopsis)
Published Harper Collins 1994
Order Crack Down from 
Clean Break
Kate
Brannigan is not amused when a gang of smash-and-grab crooks steal a Monet from
a home where she's arranged the security, and the hunt for the art thieves places
her in Italy, head-to-head with organized crime. The tough-talking, kick-boxing
sleuth is forced to confront uncomfortable choices about the people she cares
about as she battles a hard-core array of villains in a tense, complex thriller
that stretches love and loyalty to the limits.
Published Harper Collins 1996
Order Clean Break from
Watch out for a radio dramatisation of Clean Break which is scheduled for broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on the afternoon of Saturday 26th September.
Blue Genes
With
her boyfriend dead and her partner wanting her to buy him out, Manchester's
toughest private investigator, Kate Brannigan, delves into medical experimentation
and the underbelly of the music business in an attempt to save both her professional
future and her life. (From Amazon.com synopsis)
Published Harper Collins 1997 (Available in UK and Australia)
Tony Hill Mysteries
The Mermaids Singing (Winner of the Gold Dagger Award 1995)
In the
northern town of Bradfield four men have been found mutilated and tortured.
Fear grips the city; no man feels safe. Clinical psychologist Tony Hill is brought
in to profile the killer. A man with more than enough sexual problems of his
own, Tony himself becomes the unsuspecting target in a battle of wits and wills
where he has to use every ounce of his professional skill and personal nerve
to survive.
Published Harper Collins 1995
Order The Mermaids Singing from
The Wire in the Blood
Young
girls are disappearing around the country. Everyone assumes they are teenage
runaways, headed for the big city and bright lights. They vanish without trace
-- society's disposable children. There is nothing to connect them to each other,
let alone the killer whose charming manner hides a warped and sick mind.
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 details of thirty missing teenagers and asked to use their new techniques to discover whether there is a sinister link between any of the cases. Only one officer, Shaz Bowman, comes up with a concrete theory, but it is ridiculed by the rest of her group… until a killer murders and mutilates one of their number.
Could Bowman's outrageous suspicion possibly be true? For Tony Hill, the murder of a member of his team becomes a matter for personal revenge. Aided by his previous colleague, Carol Jordan, he embarks upon a campaign of psychological terrorism -- a game of cat and mouse where the roles of hunter and hunted are all too easily reversed. (From the Publisher)
Published Harper Collins 1997 (Available in UK and Australia)
Lindsay Gordon Mysteries
To find out all about Lindsay Gordon click here
Report for Murder
The
first Lindsay Gordon mystery, in which the Scottish lesbian tabloid journalist
investigates the murder of a public school pupil at a gala fundraising concert.
Published The Women's Press 1987\
Order Report for Murder from
Common
Murder
Lindsay Gordon is sent to investigate an alleged assault at the Brownlow Common peace camp - which rapidly becomes an investigation into murder when a body is found. Who has killed Rupert Crabtree, Chair of the local opposition to the camp? No one - ratepayer or reporter, policeman or peacewoman - is wholly above suspicion . . .
Published The Women's Press 1989
Order Common Murder
from
Final Edition (Deadline for Murder in USA)
Lindsay
Gordon returns to Glasgow to try mending fences with her lover, Cordelia. But
she finds Cordelia with someone else.; Lindsay's ex-lover Alison has been murdered;
and her former colleague, Jackie, has been jailed for the crime. Grimly, inexorably,
Lindsay gets drawn in to try to establish Jackie's innocence.
Published The Women's Press 1991
Order Deadline for Murder from
Union
Jack
When Tom 'Union' Jack dies, suddenly and violently, at the Amalgamated Media Workers' conference, Lindsay Gordon is suspect number one. Forced to investigate to prove her innocence, she uncovers a seething mass of rivalry, corruption and murderous greed.
Published The Women's Press 1993
Booked for Murder
The
freak accident that killed best-selling author Penny Varnavides takes on a more
sinister aspect when police discover that her latest unpublished novel featured
murder by the same means. Of the handful of people who knew the plot, the prime
suspect is wise enough to call in her old friend, Lindsay Gordon, to uncover
the truth that lies behind the seething rivalries and desperate power games
that infect the publishing world.
Published The Women's Press 1996
An extract from Booked for Murder - click here
Non Mystery Books
A Suitable Job for a Woman: The World of Private Female Investigators
Published Harper Collins
Web site address
None Found
Other sites for Val McDermid
The Tangled Web UK - British Crime Magazine - this link is to Kate Brannigan - the character
The Women's Press on Val McDermid
Reviews by Val McDermid of other mystery writing
For a listing of Val McDermids books
Page created by Leone Moffat
Last updated April 24, 2002