Val McDermid

[Cleopatracat]

Could anyone tell me is Val McDermid gender critical? I see she is speaking at the lesbian lives conference in Cork where the keynote speaker is a transwoman www.ucc.ie/en/lesbianlives2022/

Classy.

Way before he died and it was confirmed what he had been doing. Just based on meeting him years ago and rumours at the time.

The book was published in the early 90s I think.

I used to really love her books, when I read a lot of very violent crime and they are brutal. I find graphic violence very difficult these days but held a soft spot for her as a writer so was really disappointed to see her sacrifice women to some nebulous version of ‘inclusivity’ that actually excludes women.

@MrsWooster

I used to really love her books, when I read a lot of very violent crime and they are brutal. I find graphic violence very difficult these days but held a soft spot for her as a writer so was really disappointed to see her sacrifice women to some nebulous version of ‘inclusivity’ that actually excludes women.

You've articulated a lot of what I feel. I enjoyed her books well enough - though too violent for me too. I've heard her speak and found her bright, engaging and funny. I'm surprised and disappointed at her views tbh.

VmcD is an interesting one. Unlike most people I started reading her work chronologically - so I read most of the Lindsay Gordon and Kate Brannigan series before I got to Mermaids and Wire. There is a very sharp shift in tone, approach, style, plotting - everything - between the first two series (which are pretty much just jolly-japes amateur detective solves mysteries type stuff) and the torture-porn. There isn’t a big chronological gap so I’ve always wondered what was the reason for the change - did she go on a writer’s workshop which encouraged her to experiment with a radical shift in style, or did she always want to write this stuff but her publisher wouldn’t let her be too graphic? That wouldn’t explain the other changes though - the plotting is far more sophisticated for example.

I did look around to see if she had commented on it publicly at all but couldn’t find anything. Would love to know if anyone else has any info on this. It’s probably the most radical unexplained change in a writer which I have encountered.

That's really interesting @simone I'd also love to know

Her 80s feminist crime thrillers were good, of their time, earnest, her writing now is so violent towards women, hard to read, gruesome.

Did the market not shift? Writers follow trends and I've read a few crime writers who suddenly segue into completely different styles because that's where the market has moved to.

In the last year there has been a real swing from numerous high profile crime writers (I'm not including VMcD because I haven't read her most recent book) to including overtly sexist male characters and overly-sexualised descriptions of female characters. This is in series that were known for being respectful of women and not including torture porn. I'm hoping it's a temporary trend. Otherwise somebody in publishing is pushing a very misogynistic agenda on writers who had stood solidly against the worst excesses of crime fiction.

I can’t read her books anymore either. Too violent

The market shift, she used to be published on Women's Press, maybe Virago too not sure. Perhaps as she went more mainstream publisher wise her content changed because of that.

Yeah maybe it was just a response to market demand / a more mainstream publisher. The chronological overlap with her previous series / style was jarring though. But maybe she wrote the latter Gordon / Brannigan books a while before and they just took longer to come out. I dunno. I’d love to read an interview with her about her writing style etc, I find it very intriguing.

I love the Brannigan/Gordon books, reading one now in fact! Same for any similar 70's/80's crime, there's a period of excellent, skilled, independent and political female leads/investigators UK and US, that you just don't get now. Modern crime has lots of female characters, and lead detectives, but often disappointing chacterisations with age old stereotypes, lazy cliches even when written by women. They read more like violent romantic fiction, which is what the Val McDermid books are to me, its the continuing romantic relationships in the books that are the focus, its really common. Such a shame.