:00:11. > :00:14.McGuinness came third. Now it is time for HARDtalk. My
:00:14. > :00:19.guest today makes her living out of crime, often violent, disturbing
:00:20. > :00:23.crime. Val McDermid is one of Britain's most popular novelists.
:00:23. > :00:26.The stories of twisted killers and flawed detectives are part of a
:00:26. > :00:34.modern genre of graphic crime fiction that is far removed from
:00:34. > :00:44.the stories of Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle. Her stories now
:00:44. > :01:10.
:01:10. > :01:16.entertain millions around the world. Val McDermid, welcome to HARDTalk.
:01:16. > :01:20.It is nice to be here. I want to begin at the very beginning of your
:01:20. > :01:23.career. You had been a working class girl in Scotland and made it
:01:23. > :01:28.into university. You entered journalism and were working in a
:01:28. > :01:31.national newspaper. It seemed your career was set to take off, but
:01:31. > :01:41.then you switched to fiction writing, why? That was what I'd
:01:41. > :01:45.always wanted to do. Ever since I realised that writing was a job
:01:45. > :01:51.that you could get paid for, that was what I wanted to be. I wanted
:01:51. > :01:55.to tell stories for a living. I realised fairly early on that
:01:55. > :02:00.people like us did not get to write straight out of the bat. You had to
:02:00. > :02:06.work on it. I was told that you always had to have a proper job. I
:02:06. > :02:10.became a journalist. All the time, I was trying to write fiction.
:02:10. > :02:16.were working on a tabloid and obviously, one of the staples of
:02:16. > :02:20.tabloid journalism is crime. Were you beginning to look at real crime
:02:20. > :02:26.and thinking to yourself, "I can turn this into fictional gold?"
:02:26. > :02:29.really. I did not do much crime reporting. I worked for a Sunday
:02:29. > :02:33.paper, so there was not a lot of direct covering the stories in the
:02:33. > :02:38.news. I have never been drawn to using real crime cases as a
:02:38. > :02:41.springboard for fiction. I think mostly because when I was a
:02:41. > :02:45.journalist, I saw enough of the aftermath of sudden, violent death
:02:45. > :02:52.and did not want to do something that felt like I was feeding off
:02:52. > :02:56.somebody's grief. I also understood that however much you think you
:02:56. > :03:04.know about what is happening in a case, you do not know the entire
:03:04. > :03:07.story. I could very easily, inadvertently, cause more pain and
:03:07. > :03:11.grief by wandering into the mindspace of real emotions.
:03:11. > :03:18.Recently, we had a Swedish writer on and he said, "We hold a mirror
:03:18. > :03:28.up to crime to observe society." Is that the way you see crime writing?
:03:28. > :03:34.
:03:34. > :03:38.It used to be that way. There is truth in that. I think a lot of the
:03:38. > :03:41.time in the 80s and 90s, the literary novel abdicated that role.
:03:41. > :03:44.It became much more interested in literary theory than it did in
:03:44. > :03:48.narrative and engaging with the reader. Where there is a vacuum,
:03:48. > :03:50.people tend to feel it. Around that time, crime fiction became an
:03:50. > :03:53.attractive alternative for people interested in writing novels about
:03:53. > :03:57.society. That leads me to an obvious point, that is, reading
:03:57. > :04:04.your novels leads one to believe that you must have a pretty bleak
:04:04. > :04:11.view of modern society. It has to be said that extreme, horrifying
:04:11. > :04:18.violence is at the centre of many of your stories. It is at the
:04:18. > :04:21.centre of some of my stories because it is violent and shocking.
:04:21. > :04:25.The crime novel is no longer just entertainment. It has become quite
:04:25. > :04:32.something quite different. It examines who we are and why we do
:04:32. > :04:42.the things we do. The kind of characters at the heart of my books
:04:42. > :04:54.
:04:54. > :04:57.are people who deal very directly with these kinds of cases. It seems,
:04:57. > :05:01.somehow, dishonest to write about these things and not be direct
:05:01. > :05:04.about what they are and what they do. There is a very difficult line
:05:04. > :05:08.here and there is a line between exploitative and showing what
:05:08. > :05:11.violence is and what it does. just wonder then how you find the
:05:11. > :05:14.line. You say it is not just entertainment, but first and
:05:14. > :05:17.foremost, it is entertainment. Let's face it, people buying your
:05:17. > :05:19.books and other crime novels want to be entertained. The story is
:05:19. > :05:24.entertaining. The characters are interesting because the situation
:05:24. > :05:28.is interesting. That is what draws the reader in. How can horrifying
:05:28. > :05:32.and brutal violence - I can't even begin to explain some of the things
:05:32. > :05:38.that happen to the characters in your book because they are so
:05:38. > :05:43.horrifying, but how can that be entertaining? I think you are
:05:43. > :05:46.exaggerating there. I am really not. The mutilations, the torture that
:05:46. > :05:54.is inflicted on some of your characters, it is outrageously
:05:54. > :05:58.horrible. I would say that it is a lot less horrifying than what we
:05:58. > :06:08.hear on the news at regular intervals about what is done by our
:06:08. > :06:11.
:06:11. > :06:17.own security forces. What I am saying is that it is not why people
:06:17. > :06:22.are coming to the books. How do you know that? The way that they talk
:06:22. > :06:28.about the books. I get a lot of correspondence with people who read
:06:28. > :06:34.my books. What they talk about, primarily, is the characters. They
:06:34. > :06:40.talk about the characters and their relationships with each other. They
:06:40. > :06:43.speculate on the roots of the relationships and where they may go.
:06:43. > :06:47.I try to throttle back the directors of the violence as much
:06:47. > :06:53.as possible, while remaining honest about what violence is and what it
:06:53. > :06:58.does. I do not see that we have to airbrush when we write about these
:06:58. > :07:05.things, but equally, I do not glorify the things that happen. I
:07:05. > :07:11.do not think, "This will really wind them up." So there are lines
:07:11. > :07:18.you will not cross? There are a lot of lines. There are writers I will
:07:18. > :07:28.not read because I find their work disgusting. Who? I am not saying,
:07:28. > :07:30.
:07:30. > :07:34.it is not my job to slag off other writers. It is not my job to come
:07:34. > :07:38.on here and put down other riders. They make their choices. They are
:07:38. > :07:42.not the choices I would make. Every time I write a scene that involves
:07:42. > :07:45.violence, which is by no no means in all of my books, whenever I
:07:45. > :07:52.write the scene, I am sitting there looking at it from a technical
:07:52. > :07:58.point of view. I am always looking at it from that point of view of
:07:58. > :08:04.have I gone too far? Interestingly, I talked to a clinical psychologist
:08:04. > :08:09.about the stuff I write and asked if it is psychological plausible.
:08:09. > :08:12.More than once, he has said to me, "Yes, he would do this, he would
:08:12. > :08:22.also do this." He would then go on to enumerate things that other
:08:22. > :08:23.
:08:24. > :08:27.killers had done. Sometimes it goes way beyond what I would have to say
:08:27. > :08:30.to convey to the reader what this character is like. It is
:08:30. > :08:34.interesting the talk about the process of writing and how you do
:08:34. > :08:42.it. In your mind's eye, is there also a reader and a consideration
:08:42. > :08:45.on your part of the impact of some of the scenes? I do not think about
:08:45. > :08:55.the reader when I am writing because I think you then begin to
:08:55. > :08:59.self-censor. What I am thinking about when I am writing is that I
:08:59. > :09:04.am writing a book that I would like to read. I am always thinking about
:09:04. > :09:08.whether it would work in a technical sense. I am always
:09:08. > :09:14.looking at it from the perspective of, is this effective as a piece of
:09:14. > :09:17.writing? Not, is this going to shock the people? If you start
:09:17. > :09:21.going down that road, you start to second-guess your own work and your
:09:21. > :09:26.own decisions. At the end of the day, a novel comes from inside the
:09:26. > :09:33.writer. It is what I want to say and it is how I want to express
:09:33. > :09:38.myself. I am the only person to who I am answerable. I wonder if you
:09:38. > :09:41.have changed over the years. You have written an awful lot of novels
:09:41. > :09:45.now and I just wonder, I'm not suggesting all the novels involve
:09:45. > :09:48.this sort of violence, but plenty do, I wonder if you have noticed
:09:48. > :09:54.yourself becoming desensitised to violence? I do not think so. If
:09:54. > :09:58.anything, I think I am more sensitive to it. When I am reading
:09:58. > :10:01.other people's books, I think I become more readily disgusted by
:10:02. > :10:05.what I'm reading. I do find it quite amusing, in some ways, that I
:10:05. > :10:09.have become the poster girl for writing violence, purely and simply
:10:09. > :10:19.because I was at the heart of a media storm about a supposed row
:10:19. > :10:24.
:10:24. > :10:34.between me and Ian Rankin. When you examine the texts, I am right down
:10:34. > :10:34.
:10:34. > :10:42.there. You mention this row with Ian Rankin, who is another well-
:10:42. > :10:47.respected Scottish writer. His point seemed to be that that a lot
:10:47. > :10:50.of the graphic crime novels today are being written by women. He went
:10:50. > :10:54.on to say, "Most male crime writers would flinch morally from over
:10:54. > :10:58.describing an act of violence against a woman - a rape or a
:10:58. > :11:05.murder." He went on to say that women writers went to a place that
:11:05. > :11:10.men were not prepared to go to. have said many times what I have to
:11:10. > :11:14.say on this subject. What I would say is, I do not think this is an
:11:14. > :11:17.accurate statement of the position of the genre at the moment. I think
:11:17. > :11:22.there are plenty of male writers who write practically about all
:11:22. > :11:26.sorts of violence. I do not think it is the exclusive preserve of
:11:26. > :11:34.women. I do not think it is also the exclusive preserve of lesbians,
:11:34. > :11:37.which has also be said. The degree to which most crime fiction
:11:37. > :11:43.involves a male perpetrator, a lot of it involves male perpetrators
:11:43. > :11:53.inflicting terrible pain and violence on women. Is that a fair
:11:53. > :11:54.
:11:54. > :12:00.comment? Is that the way you see it? It is not the way I see my own
:12:00. > :12:06.fiction. I do not sit there and think about my fiction and think
:12:06. > :12:09.about who I'm going to inflict violence on. For me, a book always
:12:10. > :12:15.starts with a story and something that interests me. It starts with
:12:15. > :12:19.an idea that I want to explore. I do not sit there thinking, "What
:12:19. > :12:27.lovely violence am I going to perpetrate in this book?" That
:12:27. > :12:30.could not be further from my mind. That is not what I think I am
:12:30. > :12:34.starting out from them. Of course we write about violence. We are
:12:34. > :12:41.writing about murder. Murder is not a tea party. Murder is not the
:12:41. > :12:47.crossword puzzle of Agatha Christie. The novel is the entertainment of
:12:47. > :12:51.which murder is part and parcel of the story telling. What is actually
:12:51. > :12:54.at the heart of the best crime fiction in Britain these days is
:12:55. > :12:59.character. It is what happens when you put people under pressure and
:12:59. > :13:03.we see how they react and how they behave and what that tells us about
:13:03. > :13:07.themselves. I do believe that we get the crimes that we deserve in
:13:07. > :13:17.our society. When you live in a materialistic society, you will get
:13:17. > :13:31.
:13:31. > :13:35.crimes of materialism. You'll get Let me quote a point that was made
:13:35. > :13:41.by in author who is also a long time crime fiction reviewer, she
:13:41. > :13:48.quit because she said she was sick... She quit the business of
:13:48. > :13:57.reviewing certain novels. She said she was sick of too many novels
:13:57. > :14:04.that depicted situations of sadistic misogyny. She said dead,
:14:04. > :14:12.brutalised women sell books and dead men do not. That is a cynical
:14:12. > :14:19.view but it is a view that has some merit. No. There is a certain area
:14:19. > :14:27.of the genre that does glorify misogyny and sexual sadism. But it
:14:27. > :14:35.is not the core of the genre. It is not the books that have respect. We
:14:35. > :14:43.would not say this is the best of contemporary crime fiction. There
:14:44. > :14:53.is always an element of dross. 95% of any field of artistic endeavours
:14:54. > :14:54.
:14:54. > :15:00.has that. It always annoys me that crime fiction is thought of to be
:15:00. > :15:10.the worst of the output when other genres are praised. Let's stop
:15:10. > :15:13.trying to sensationalise what we're doing here. Let us look at the good
:15:14. > :15:17.stuff, the quality staff and about writers that care about what they
:15:17. > :15:21.are doing. They are concerned about the storytelling. You have studied
:15:21. > :15:31.crime writing over time. You have written about a host of other crime
:15:31. > :15:33.
:15:33. > :15:36.writers. Is it true to say that there has to be a resolution? Does
:15:36. > :15:46.the bad guy have to, in crime fiction, have to be captured or
:15:46. > :15:51.
:15:51. > :15:55.killed? It is not as clear-cut as it used to be. In the early days,
:15:55. > :15:59.the villain had to be gift-wrapped and headed to the policeman.
:15:59. > :16:03.Nowadays, we are a bit more sophisticated than that. It is not
:16:03. > :16:13.unusual for there to be a resolution that is less than clear-
:16:13. > :16:14.
:16:14. > :16:17.cut. Sometimes the villains appear to walk away. What also happens is
:16:17. > :16:25.that the central issues are resolved but the side issues are
:16:25. > :16:28.not. So there is a sign that things are not as clear-cut. You say
:16:28. > :16:36.you're depiction of violence is meaningful and that they are saying
:16:36. > :16:40.something about the nature of society. The reason that it is
:16:40. > :16:44.still fiction is because, at the end of the day, is that the reader
:16:44. > :16:48.sees the order has been restored and that the villain has been put
:16:48. > :16:58.to an end. If that is not the case, then would not crime books be
:16:58. > :17:02.unsettling and fear inducing? think they should be. People say to
:17:02. > :17:05.me they find some books disturbing. That is good because if you do not
:17:05. > :17:09.find it disturbing you might need professional help. In general, the
:17:09. > :17:16.genre creates a moral landscape but bad things happen to people who do
:17:16. > :17:21.bad things. There is still room in the genre for more experimental
:17:21. > :17:25.things and experimental ways of ending a novel. Patricia Highsmith
:17:25. > :17:35.writing at a time where the moral landscape around her was not how it
:17:35. > :17:40.
:17:40. > :17:44.is today. She wrote novels where Tom Ripley did not come to a bad
:17:44. > :17:54.end. Do you actively seek to escape from this formula that surrounds
:17:54. > :18:04.
:18:04. > :18:09.crime fiction? I always have. readers are not delighted when you
:18:09. > :18:16.stray from the formula. I do not take all my readers with me to all
:18:16. > :18:22.my books. That is fine. I am too much of an ambitious writer to be
:18:22. > :18:32.constrained by the market. You have written short stories and non-
:18:32. > :18:34.
:18:34. > :18:39.Can you imagine that as you develop as a writer, you might abandon
:18:39. > :18:42.crime altogether? I suppose. But what angers me about crime is that
:18:43. > :18:48.the genre has become much wider and deeper than when I first started
:18:48. > :18:56.writing. When I started writing it was just the basic police
:18:56. > :19:01.procedural. Now a lot of new styles and turns have emerged. It seems
:19:01. > :19:11.that anything I want to write about will fit into that category. I am
:19:11. > :19:11.
:19:11. > :19:15.also a bit of an adrenalin junkie. It is exciting. I do not know if I
:19:15. > :19:21.can sustain the adrenaline on a book that is not dealing with such
:19:21. > :19:31.things. It strikes me that quite a number of your detectives, the good
:19:31. > :19:31.
:19:31. > :19:35.guys, are troubled. They are good people but they are very difficult
:19:35. > :19:45.and have deeply flawed personalities. They are also not
:19:45. > :19:49.
:19:49. > :19:56.very happy. Does that reflect you and some of your own unhappiness?
:19:56. > :20:04.Is that something that feeds into the way you portray characters? You
:20:04. > :20:08.also had a difficult education growing up. There was nothing
:20:08. > :20:12.traumatic. It just was complicated. I skipped a year in high school. I
:20:12. > :20:22.was with a group of people who were regarded as experiments by the
:20:22. > :20:23.
:20:23. > :20:30.system. I think I am a pretty happy person. I have not had a traumatic
:20:30. > :20:35.life. I am aware that my life has been a smooth passage, so far. The
:20:35. > :20:41.things that cause pain and grief have largely passed me by.
:20:41. > :20:51.I was just thinking about what Gordon Brown said. He shared your
:20:51. > :20:52.
:20:52. > :20:56.educational past. He was groomed for academic success at a young age
:20:56. > :21:02.and he said it had done real harm, mental harm. Did you come away from
:21:02. > :21:12.that experiment feeling the same way? I think I was one of those
:21:12. > :21:22.better off. One of the lasting things was an overpowering need to
:21:22. > :21:26.
:21:26. > :21:32.succeed. An overpowering drive. I only started to relax around 50. A
:21:32. > :21:42.lot of people crashed and burned. I saw a lot of people suffering
:21:42. > :21:43.
:21:43. > :21:52.around me. You always thought you had to do better? Yes. The top kids
:21:52. > :21:59.were taken out and sent to high school. We were not spread evenly
:21:59. > :22:05.throughout. We were in separate classes and groups. Everybody
:22:05. > :22:10.called us the experiment. By the time we were mixed into the general
:22:10. > :22:14.population, we were labelled as experiments. The staff was also
:22:14. > :22:20.giving us the message that we were supposed to do better than everyone
:22:20. > :22:30.else. It is not easy when you try to fit into a social group that is
:22:30. > :22:30.
:22:30. > :22:40.older than you. One-year makes a big difference at that age. I did
:22:40. > :22:48.
:22:48. > :22:52.not think I fitted in at all. One of the reasons was that I wanted to
:22:52. > :22:55.be a writer which has always considered to be an outsider like
:22:55. > :23:04.role. Always an observer. And then there was also the part of my
:23:04. > :23:10.sexuality. When I was a teenager there were no lesbians. They were
:23:10. > :23:20.like mythical creatures. There was no template, no books, no films
:23:20. > :23:27.
:23:27. > :23:30.portraying lesbians. I knew the difference was there but I did not
:23:30. > :23:33.acknowledge it. You went from working-class roots to Oxford which
:23:33. > :23:40.is patently not for working-class people. They knew when into a
:23:40. > :23:46.newsroom which was full of men. And into crime writing which some in
:23:46. > :23:56.novel-writing looked down at the limited of crime fiction.
:23:56. > :23:56.
:23:56. > :24:01.Scottish have a word that means something like bloody minded. I was
:24:01. > :24:11.brought up in a household where the message I was given was I could be
:24:11. > :24:17.whoever I wanted to be. Even though on the surface I had some