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