Edinburgh International Book Festival: Val McDermid
Val McDermid is one of the most successful crime writers in Scotland with 25 best selling novels and several literary rewards – she even has a stand at Raith Rovers' football stadium named after her. She's often championed as the queen of Tartan Noir, a title she visibly cringed at when interviewer and fellow crime writer Lin Anderson mentioned it here.
Her latest work is a stand alone novel, titled The Vanishing Point. McDermid stated that the novel's inspiration started with one small isolated incident. While travelling with her nine year old son in America her replacement knees set off a metal detector. In the States, if you are waiting to be searched, you are required to stand in a perspex box. While waiting in this box, separated from her son, McDermid described how she suddenly realised how easy it would be for someone to simply walk up to her child and lead him away. If she was to leave the box all attention would be focused on her as the criminal and not the person quietly abducting her child.
It is the realisation of this fear that provides what Anderson describes as the “explosive beginning" to The Vanishing Point. McDermid described how writing a stand alone novel allows for more freedom than a series, allowing her to place characters immediately in the centre of the action. She did remark that it can allow for some lazy writing, because characters that have appeared in previous works can be used again – if you've already got an inspector from Scotland Yard from a previous novel, why invent a new one? She even admitted to previously borrowing a character from the TV series of her book Wire in The Blood, taking a female detective who'd only spoken a few lines and fleshing her out for a novel, even portraying her as a lesbian. This was to the distaste of the script writer... who had named this character after his wife.
In addition to being a thriller The Vanishing Point is also a psychological study of celebrity culture. The protagonist is a ghost writer, who spends her time penning the autobiographies of reality stars, one of whom has found fame on McDermid's reality TV show Goldfish Bowl, set on a fictional island in the Forth. McDermid described authors, however, as reluctant celebrities, since being famous interferes with their ability to observe – “The last thing an author wants to be is the story.” She argued that it wouldn't be an exciting story anyway, as it's a myth that the writer's lifestyle is glamorous. The audience felt differently, asking if she had considered penning her autobiography.
While she admitted that she found the memoirs of writers Jackie Kay and Jeanette Winterson to be rich reading, she stayed firm to the statement that her life hasn't been been traumatic enough to make good reading. Luckily, none of the characters in her novels could say the same. [Rowena McIntosh]