Val McDermid

Kirkcaldy in Fife shaped Val McDermid, born there on 4 June 1955 into a working class family and the first pupil from a Scottish state school to take a place at St Hilda's College, Oxford. She reported for newspapers for years before Report for Murder introduced the journalist detective Lindsay Gordon in 1987. The Mermaids Singing won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger in 1995 and brought in the clinical psychologist Tony Hill, whose cases with Carol Jordan became the ITV series Wire in the Blood, starring Robson Green, from 2002 to 2008. How the Dead Speak, published in 2019, is the eleventh Tony Hill and Carol Jordan novel: Tony is in prison, Carol has left the police to review doubtful convictions, and a halted redevelopment at a former orphanage gives up dozens of skeletons. McDermid also writes the Karen Pirie, Kate Brannigan and Allie Burns books, and received the Cartier Diamond Dagger in 2010. A lifelong Raith Rovers supporter, she sponsored the Fife club's shirt from 2014 and tore the deal up in 2022 over a player signing she called disgusting and despicable, moving her backing to the women's team, which now plays as McDermid Ladies.