29/10/2011 Click

McGuinness came third. Now it is time for HARDtalk. My

guest today makes her living out of crime, often violent, disturbing

crime. Val McDermid is one of Britain's most popular novelists.

The stories of twisted killers and flawed detectives are part of a

modern genre of graphic crime fiction that is far removed from

the stories of Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle. Her stories now

entertain millions around the world. Val McDermid, welcome to HARDTalk.

It is nice to be here. I want to begin at the very beginning of your

career. You had been a working class girl in Scotland and made it

into university. You entered journalism and were working in a

national newspaper. It seemed your career was set to take off, but

then you switched to fiction writing, why? That was what I'd

always wanted to do. Ever since I realised that writing was a job

that you could get paid for, that was what I wanted to be. I wanted

to tell stories for a living. I realised fairly early on that

people like us did not get to write straight out of the bat. You had to

work on it. I was told that you always had to have a proper job. I

became a journalist. All the time, I was trying to write fiction.

were working on a tabloid and obviously, one of the staples of

tabloid journalism is crime. Were you beginning to look at real crime

and thinking to yourself, "I can turn this into fictional gold?"

really. I did not do much crime reporting. I worked for a Sunday

paper, so there was not a lot of direct covering the stories in the

news. I have never been drawn to using real crime cases as a

springboard for fiction. I think mostly because when I was a

journalist, I saw enough of the aftermath of sudden, violent death

and did not want to do something that felt like I was feeding off

somebody's grief. I also understood that however much you think you

know about what is happening in a case, you do not know the entire

story. I could very easily, inadvertently, cause more pain and

grief by wandering into the mindspace of real emotions.

Recently, we had a Swedish writer on and he said, "We hold a mirror

up to crime to observe society." Is that the way you see crime writing?

It used to be that way. There is truth in that. I think a lot of the

time in the 80s and 90s, the literary novel abdicated that role.

It became much more interested in literary theory than it did in

narrative and engaging with the reader. Where there is a vacuum,

people tend to feel it. Around that time, crime fiction became an

attractive alternative for people interested in writing novels about

society. That leads me to an obvious point, that is, reading

your novels leads one to believe that you must have a pretty bleak

view of modern society. It has to be said that extreme, horrifying

violence is at the centre of many of your stories. It is at the

centre of some of my stories because it is violent and shocking.

The crime novel is no longer just entertainment. It has become quite

something quite different. It examines who we are and why we do

the things we do. The kind of characters at the heart of my books

are people who deal very directly with these kinds of cases. It seems,

somehow, dishonest to write about these things and not be direct

about what they are and what they do. There is a very difficult line

here and there is a line between exploitative and showing what

violence is and what it does. just wonder then how you find the

line. You say it is not just entertainment, but first and

foremost, it is entertainment. Let's face it, people buying your

books and other crime novels want to be entertained. The story is

entertaining. The characters are interesting because the situation

is interesting. That is what draws the reader in. How can horrifying

and brutal violence - I can't even begin to explain some of the things

that happen to the characters in your book because they are so

horrifying, but how can that be entertaining? I think you are

exaggerating there. I am really not. The mutilations, the torture that

is inflicted on some of your characters, it is outrageously

horrible. I would say that it is a lot less horrifying than what we

hear on the news at regular intervals about what is done by our

own security forces. What I am saying is that it is not why people

are coming to the books. How do you know that? The way that they talk

about the books. I get a lot of correspondence with people who read

my books. What they talk about, primarily, is the characters. They

talk about the characters and their relationships with each other. They

speculate on the roots of the relationships and where they may go.

I try to throttle back the directors of the violence as much

as possible, while remaining honest about what violence is and what it

does. I do not see that we have to airbrush when we write about these

things, but equally, I do not glorify the things that happen. I

do not think, "This will really wind them up." So there are lines

you will not cross? There are a lot of lines. There are writers I will

not read because I find their work disgusting. Who? I am not saying,

it is not my job to slag off other writers. It is not my job to come

on here and put down other riders. They make their choices. They are

not the choices I would make. Every time I write a scene that involves

violence, which is by no no means in all of my books, whenever I

write the scene, I am sitting there looking at it from a technical

point of view. I am always looking at it from that point of view of

have I gone too far? Interestingly, I talked to a clinical psychologist

about the stuff I write and asked if it is psychological plausible.

More than once, he has said to me, "Yes, he would do this, he would

also do this." He would then go on to enumerate things that other

killers had done. Sometimes it goes way beyond what I would have to say

to convey to the reader what this character is like. It is

interesting the talk about the process of writing and how you do

it. In your mind's eye, is there also a reader and a consideration

on your part of the impact of some of the scenes? I do not think about

the reader when I am writing because I think you then begin to

self-censor. What I am thinking about when I am writing is that I

am writing a book that I would like to read. I am always thinking about

whether it would work in a technical sense. I am always

looking at it from the perspective of, is this effective as a piece of

writing? Not, is this going to shock the people? If you start

going down that road, you start to second-guess your own work and your

own decisions. At the end of the day, a novel comes from inside the

writer. It is what I want to say and it is how I want to express

myself. I am the only person to who I am answerable. I wonder if you

have changed over the years. You have written an awful lot of novels

now and I just wonder, I'm not suggesting all the novels involve

this sort of violence, but plenty do, I wonder if you have noticed

yourself becoming desensitised to violence? I do not think so. If

anything, I think I am more sensitive to it. When I am reading

other people's books, I think I become more readily disgusted by

what I'm reading. I do find it quite amusing, in some ways, that I

have become the poster girl for writing violence, purely and simply

because I was at the heart of a media storm about a supposed row

between me and Ian Rankin. When you examine the texts, I am right down

there. You mention this row with Ian Rankin, who is another well-

respected Scottish writer. His point seemed to be that that a lot

of the graphic crime novels today are being written by women. He went

on to say, "Most male crime writers would flinch morally from over

describing an act of violence against a woman - a rape or a

murder." He went on to say that women writers went to a place that

men were not prepared to go to. have said many times what I have to

say on this subject. What I would say is, I do not think this is an

accurate statement of the position of the genre at the moment. I think

there are plenty of male writers who write practically about all

sorts of violence. I do not think it is the exclusive preserve of

women. I do not think it is also the exclusive preserve of lesbians,

which has also be said. The degree to which most crime fiction

involves a male perpetrator, a lot of it involves male perpetrators

inflicting terrible pain and violence on women. Is that a fair

comment? Is that the way you see it? It is not the way I see my own

fiction. I do not sit there and think about my fiction and think

about who I'm going to inflict violence on. For me, a book always

starts with a story and something that interests me. It starts with

an idea that I want to explore. I do not sit there thinking, "What

lovely violence am I going to perpetrate in this book?" That

could not be further from my mind. That is not what I think I am

starting out from them. Of course we write about violence. We are

writing about murder. Murder is not a tea party. Murder is not the

crossword puzzle of Agatha Christie. The novel is the entertainment of

which murder is part and parcel of the story telling. What is actually

at the heart of the best crime fiction in Britain these days is

character. It is what happens when you put people under pressure and

we see how they react and how they behave and what that tells us about

themselves. I do believe that we get the crimes that we deserve in

our society. When you live in a materialistic society, you will get

crimes of materialism. You'll get Let me quote a point that was made

by in author who is also a long time crime fiction reviewer, she

quit because she said she was sick... She quit the business of

reviewing certain novels. She said she was sick of too many novels

that depicted situations of sadistic misogyny. She said dead,

brutalised women sell books and dead men do not. That is a cynical

view but it is a view that has some merit. No. There is a certain area

of the genre that does glorify misogyny and sexual sadism. But it

is not the core of the genre. It is not the books that have respect. We

would not say this is the best of contemporary crime fiction. There

is always an element of dross. 95% of any field of artistic endeavours

has that. It always annoys me that crime fiction is thought of to be

the worst of the output when other genres are praised. Let's stop

trying to sensationalise what we're doing here. Let us look at the good

stuff, the quality staff and about writers that care about what they

are doing. They are concerned about the storytelling. You have studied

crime writing over time. You have written about a host of other crime

writers. Is it true to say that there has to be a resolution? Does

the bad guy have to, in crime fiction, have to be captured or

killed? It is not as clear-cut as it used to be. In the early days,

the villain had to be gift-wrapped and headed to the policeman.

Nowadays, we are a bit more sophisticated than that. It is not

unusual for there to be a resolution that is less than clear-

cut. Sometimes the villains appear to walk away. What also happens is

that the central issues are resolved but the side issues are

not. So there is a sign that things are not as clear-cut. You say

you're depiction of violence is meaningful and that they are saying

something about the nature of society. The reason that it is

still fiction is because, at the end of the day, is that the reader

sees the order has been restored and that the villain has been put

to an end. If that is not the case, then would not crime books be

unsettling and fear inducing? think they should be. People say to

me they find some books disturbing. That is good because if you do not

find it disturbing you might need professional help. In general, the

genre creates a moral landscape but bad things happen to people who do

bad things. There is still room in the genre for more experimental

things and experimental ways of ending a novel. Patricia Highsmith

writing at a time where the moral landscape around her was not how it

is today. She wrote novels where Tom Ripley did not come to a bad

end. Do you actively seek to escape from this formula that surrounds

crime fiction? I always have. readers are not delighted when you

stray from the formula. I do not take all my readers with me to all

my books. That is fine. I am too much of an ambitious writer to be

constrained by the market. You have written short stories and non-

Can you imagine that as you develop as a writer, you might abandon

crime altogether? I suppose. But what angers me about crime is that

the genre has become much wider and deeper than when I first started

writing. When I started writing it was just the basic police

procedural. Now a lot of new styles and turns have emerged. It seems

that anything I want to write about will fit into that category. I am

also a bit of an adrenalin junkie. It is exciting. I do not know if I

can sustain the adrenaline on a book that is not dealing with such

things. It strikes me that quite a number of your detectives, the good

guys, are troubled. They are good people but they are very difficult

and have deeply flawed personalities. They are also not

very happy. Does that reflect you and some of your own unhappiness?

Is that something that feeds into the way you portray characters? You

also had a difficult education growing up. There was nothing

traumatic. It just was complicated. I skipped a year in high school. I

was with a group of people who were regarded as experiments by the

system. I think I am a pretty happy person. I have not had a traumatic

life. I am aware that my life has been a smooth passage, so far. The

things that cause pain and grief have largely passed me by.

I was just thinking about what Gordon Brown said. He shared your

educational past. He was groomed for academic success at a young age

and he said it had done real harm, mental harm. Did you come away from

that experiment feeling the same way? I think I was one of those

better off. One of the lasting things was an overpowering need to

succeed. An overpowering drive. I only started to relax around 50. A

lot of people crashed and burned. I saw a lot of people suffering

around me. You always thought you had to do better? Yes. The top kids

were taken out and sent to high school. We were not spread evenly

throughout. We were in separate classes and groups. Everybody

called us the experiment. By the time we were mixed into the general

population, we were labelled as experiments. The staff was also

giving us the message that we were supposed to do better than everyone

else. It is not easy when you try to fit into a social group that is

older than you. One-year makes a big difference at that age. I did

not think I fitted in at all. One of the reasons was that I wanted to

be a writer which has always considered to be an outsider like

role. Always an observer. And then there was also the part of my

sexuality. When I was a teenager there were no lesbians. They were

like mythical creatures. There was no template, no books, no films

portraying lesbians. I knew the difference was there but I did not

acknowledge it. You went from working-class roots to Oxford which

is patently not for working-class people. They knew when into a

newsroom which was full of men. And into crime writing which some in

novel-writing looked down at the limited of crime fiction.

Scottish have a word that means something like bloody minded. I was

brought up in a household where the message I was given was I could be

whoever I wanted to be. Even though on the surface I had some