I think Jane Austen builds suspense well in a couple of places, but she squanders it, and she gets to the endgame too quickly. So I will be working on those things. Val McDermid Read Quote
I’ve never wanted to live in a ghetto or write in a ghetto. I want to write about a world that reflects the one most people live in. Gay people are just one aspect of that. Val McDermid Read Quote
The condition of rage is one in which I find myself starting my day – once I see the news headlines. Val McDermid Read Quote
I spent a lot of time at my grandparents in the school holidays, and the only books in the house were a copy of the Bible and Agatha Christie’s ‘Murder at the Vicarage.’ I developed a taste for murder mysteries and then later discovered libraries, second-hand bookshops, and jumble sales. Val McDermid Read Quote
The contemporary crime novel is, at its best, a novel of character. That’s where the suspense comes from. Val McDermid Read Quote
On one hand, you’ve got ‘decent’ men, and on the other you’ve got neanderthal misogynist bawbags – and the middle ground is what’s disappearing. Val McDermid Read Quote
I think that crime is a good vehicle for looking at society in general because the nature of the crime novel means that you draw on a wide group of social possibilities. Val McDermid Read Quote
It seems to me that one of the things that happened with a lot of literary fiction in the 1980s and 1990s was that it became very concerned with the academy and less with how people live their lives. We got to a point where the crime novel stepped into the breach. It was also a time when the crime novel stopped being so metropolitan. Val McDermid Read Quote
