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Val McDermid is a No.1 bestseller whose novels have been translated into more than thirty languages, and have sold more than sixteen million copies. She has won many awards internationally, including the CWA Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year and the LA Times Book of the Year Award. She was inducted into the ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards Hall of Fame in 2009, was the recipient of the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger in 2010 and received the Lambda Literary Foundation Pioneer Award in 2011. In 2016, Val received the Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction Award at the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival. In 2017, she received the DIVA Literary Prize for Crime and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She is also the patron of the Scottish Book Trust. Val writes full time and lives in Edinburgh and the East Neuk of Fife.

‘Kate Brannigan deserves promotion to the top rank, alongside Kinsey Millhone and V.I. Warshawski. Plot, characterization, pace are all first-rate, and Brannigan is one of the most likeable of all today’s PIs’ Sunday Telegraph‘A satisfying range of villains, Manchester and its environs turn deeply sinister and Brannigan toughs and wisecracks her way to a solution.’ The TimesPraise for Val McDermid:'No one rivals Val McDermid’s skill at writing truly terrifying thrillers’ Good Housekeeping‘The real mistress of psychological gripping thrillers' Daily Express'McDermid's capacity to enter the warped mind of a deviant criminal is shiveringly convincing' The Times‘Val McDermid is undoubtedly the queen of British crime’ Observer'McDermid’s expertly juggled plotlines and masterful handling of pace and tension tick all the best boxes’ Guardian‘The queen of crime is still at the top of her game’ Independent‘One of today’s most accomplished crime writers’ Literary Review‘Her writing is never less than excellent’ Crime Time