Val McDermid

[SimonBridges]

When ever she pops up on things on Radio 4 I love her but I’ve never read any of her books.

Does anyone have a recommendation of where I should start?

A place of execution - it's a standalone rather than part of a series.

Then The Mermaids Singing which is the first of the Tony Hill/Carol Jackson series. All books in the series are great!

I recently thought the same thing (saw her on something on tv) so downloaded Distant Echo which is the first of the Karen Pirie series. It was ok but I wasn't grippped by it. It was a good story and I can't really put my finger on what it was that made me think 'meh' because it's exactly the sort of book I usually love.
I'll be watching this thread to see feedback from others.

Thanks Bookgirl.
It’s so hard to know where to start.

I'm not a big fan of her later books, but I love her Kate Brannigan series and her Lindsay Gordon series. Mainly because I'm lazy and they're much snappier reads.

Have read most of Val McDermid's books from the beginning - am just starting Splinter the Silence, #9 in the Carol Jordan & Tony Hill series. I put off reading A Place of Execution and The Mermaids Singing because they sounded too different from her early books but thought they were excellent when I finally got round to reading them.

Minniemagoo, although Karen Pirie features in The Distant Echo, I don't really see it as part of the series - I think it was written as a standalone and that it's not as good as most of her other books. A Darker Domain is much more about her and and the crime investigation, her as a police detective, and it's a lot better than The Distant Echo.

Otherwise she has 4 series and various standalones.

Report for Murder is #1 in her first series (6 books) featuring a Scottish lesbian journalist (as VMc was herself)
Dead Beat starts her 2nd series (6 books) - Kate Brannigan is a heterosexual PI in south Manchester. I enjoyed reading these - more mainstream, less political than Lindsay Gordon though
The Carol Jordan/Tony Hill series, together with the standalone A Place of Execution took her into the big time - Carol is a police detective and Tony is a profiler - they work together and become very close but there is always unresolved sexual and other tension. Gradually there is a team of other regular characters. I initially was quite reluctant to read a serial killer story and it took me a while to read this and there are some bits of quite shocking violence etc , but I was hooked. #1 is The Mermaids Singing
Karen Pirie - Another police detective, back in Scotland this time. Don't be put off by The Distant Echo, and if you've not read that start with A Darker Domain, as Echo features Karen Pirie but isn't really written as a series novel and she's not a main character in it.

OP as with Dancelike I prefer the earlier works, I find the later ones a too violent. Although some of her standalone work such as A Place of Execution are less graphic.

Agree that A Place of Execution is excellent, and I also love the Tony Hill books. The Mermaids Singing is the first in that series, but is fairly graphic, be warned!

Start with her Tony Hill/Carol Jordan series. They're amazing. The Mermaids Singing is the first one

I’ve downloaded samples of The Mermaids Singing and A Place of Execution. Just need to finish the book I’m on first.