Trick of the Dark

Val McDermid

Val McDermid grew up in a Scottish mining community then read English at Oxford. She was a journalist for sixteen years, spending the last three years as Northern Bureau Chief of a national Sunday tabloid. Now a full-time writer, she divides her time between Cheshire and Northumberland.

In 2010 she received the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger Award, which honours outstanding achievement in the field of crime writing. Margaret Murphy, then chair of the CWA, said: "The CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger award acknowledges the work of an author who has made an outstanding contribution to the genre. Val McDermid is a worthy winner whose work has entertained and thrilled millions of readers as well as many more who have enjoyed the TV adaptations her books have inspired."

McDermid has achieved major success with her series of books featuring criminal profiler, Dr Tony Hill. The first book in the series, The Mermaids Singing, won the 1995 Gold Dagger Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year, while the second, The Wire in the Blood, lends its name to the highly acclaimed television series featuring Robson Green as Tony Hill. The Last Temptation was a Top Ten bestseller. The Torment of Others came out in paperback in 2005. Beneath the Bleeding came out in summer 2007 and went straight into the Top Ten.

A Place of Execution was awarded the LA Times Book of the Year Award, and has gone onto become the most nominated award-winning thriller in the USA since 2000. Killing the Shadows received critical acclaim on its release in 2000. 'The Grave Tattoo' was published in 2006 in hardback and stayed in the Top Ten for over a month. 'A Darker Domain' is due for publication in 2008.

A Place of Execution was adapted into a successful ITV drama with Juliet Stephenson. Val McDermid is also a regular contributor to Radio 4, where she recently presented the series From Ban to Booker and was recently awarded Stonewall's Writer of the Year.

McDermid has also written six crime novels featuring Manchester PI Kate Brannigan, and the last of these, Star Struck, won the Grand Prix des Romans d'Adventure in France. A further series of novels featured journalist-sleuth Lindsay Gordon, with the latest of these, Hostage to Murder, published in November 2003.

She was inducted into the ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards Hall of Fame in 2009.