Val McDermid said she never planned to stop writing about her most famous characters – but they stopped talking to her.
The Edinburgh-based author, dubbed the “Queen of Crime”, is best known for her “Wire in the Blood” series of novels featuring the clinical psychologist, Dr Tony Hill, and detective Carol Jordan.
The award-winning books were adapted for television, starring Robson Green as Hill, and Hermione Norris as DCI Jordan.
But after 11 novels, culminating in 2019’s How the Dead Speak, McDermid said she had put the characters through so much that they no longer “speak to her”.
McDermid, 70, told an audience at the Granite Noir crime writing festival in Aberdeen, that she imagines the pair now walking in the hills and “healing”.
Asked by a fan if she was “done with” Hill and Jordan, she replied: “I always feel like it’s more like a character’s done with me. They’re not shouting in my head anymore.
“Sometimes I can’t predict when that’s going to happen.
“With Tony and Carol I kind of felt like anywhere else to go would have been inhumane. I felt like I’ve done these terrible things to them in the course of these 11 books.
“I like to think of them going for walks with the dog on the West Pennine moors and healing.
“Do I think about them being happy? No, I wouldn’t go that far, but they’re certainly healing.”
Set in the fictional town of Bradfield, the series sees serial killer profiler Hill tap into his own dark side to get inside the heads of the killers.
He works alongside Jordan and later D.I. Alex Fielding, played by Scots actress Simone Lahbib in the TV series, to catch the killers before they strike again.
The fan revealed she had flown thousands of miles from southern California just to see her at the event, adding: “That’s how much of a fan I am…
“I absolutely adore Tony and Carol. So my question for you – I’ve been waiting since 2019 for another one – if you’re not writing any more, does it reach a point when you’re done with a character?”
McDermid offered a glimmer of hope, however, as the characters could potentially cross over into another of her best-selling book series.
The writer’s Allie Burns novels are set at ten year intervals, starting in 1979, with the third in the series, 1999, next in line.
McDermid said: “1999 will be the next book I write in the Allie Burns series and in 1999 in my universe my books exist so my characters exist.
“There’s no reason why people can’t cross. It’s possible for me to imagine how these stories might interweave.
“So you might see characters that you thought were long gone.”
McDermid, who grew up in Kirkcaldy, Fife, has sold more than 20 million books across the world, translated into more than 40 languages.
Her latest novel Silent Bones was the eighth in her Karen Pirie series, adapted for TV starring Lauren Lyle. [And the author mentions The Edinburgh Reporter on Page 160 of the hardback edition…]
