Val McDermid has written thirty novels. Thirty! She's still chugging along. At some point around five or ten years ago, she realized her time was limited, and she had a great burst of productivity; recently, there has been non-fiction ("Forensics"), a brisk re-telling of a Jane Austen story ("Northanger Abbey"), and at least one new Tony Hill/Carol Jordan saga. (Like her hero, PD James, McDermid is obsessed with Austen. And did you see there is yet another posthumous PD James volume out now? It's a collection of stories, not to be confused with the other excellent posthumous collection, "The Mistletoe Murder." My cup runneth over!)
People say your adolescent obsessions are the things you'll write about with the most fervor, throughout the entirety of your life, and that's true for me; at sixteen, I was delighted by murder mysteries, and at thirty-five, I'm still delighted. Notice how much McDermid has happening within the first forty pages of "Out of Bounds." A guy smashes a car window, steals a car, then accidentally drives several of his friends to their deaths. His DNA happens to have a link to a cold case--someone who raped and murdered some lady twenty years ago. Meanwhile, a non-functional heir with an obsessively chattering brain worries aloud about South Asia, then wanders out of a bar and gets shot and killed--under cloudy circumstances--on a park bench. (His mother was on a plane that exploded--an apparent Ireland-based terrorist attack--twenty years ago.) And then there's Inspector Karen Pirie, mourning the premature death of her lover, forced to dust herself off and make her way through a case like a normal person (while privately aware that she is in tatters, at best).
It's the inspectors that set McDermid apart. I get frustrated with Ruth Rendell's Wexford novels; Wexford sometimes seems dull to me. And, as others have noted, the later Dalgliesh novels feature a rather insufferably priggish version of Dalgliesh. And, to me, Ian Rankin's Rebus is sometimes *too* flawed; his brooding nature and his drinking become wearying. But McDermid's inspectors tend to have--at least for me--just the right balance of Serious Intractable Problem-Besettedness and Plucky Can-Do Spirit. Tony Hill, for example, has extraordinary empathy for serial killers, and this makes him great at his job; it also means that he has a weird well of self-loathing, or discomfort, and he can't ever have sex with anyone. (I'd read about Tony Hill through twenty, thirty volumes, if I could--and maybe I one day will be able to, if McDermid keeps going.) There's the guy in McDermid's "A Place of Execution" (called by Rendell one of the greatest crime novels in history) who rushes to judgment and causes a big heap of consternation, despite good intentions. And there's the reporter in the same novel, eager to cash in on a morally-fraught bit of reporting, and yet also in possession of a decent set of ethical principles. McDermid gives these reasonably likable characters riveting workplace issues--a mole in the office, a piggish supervisor, a slow-witted assistant--so you feel like you're encountering a report on your own work life, every few pages, even in the midst of murder and terrorism.
I often wish literary fiction would borrow from McDermid. I recently abandoned "Run," by Ann Patchett, because it was clear that nothing interesting would happen--at least not at a rate speedier than one-gripping-event-per-one-hundred pages. No corpses, no roiling inner tension. Maile Meloy says, "Don't blame adult readers for turning to children's fiction. If you pick up a literary novel today, you might read half the book before an event takes place." I echo Meloy's brave observation--and I also want to say, if you're bored with "Run," you can always turn to "A Place of Execution," "Out of Bounds," "The Wire in the Blood." These McDermid books move briskly, and the stakes are high. Also, the writing is superb:
Roland Brown always left his house in Scotlandwell in plenty of time to cycle the six miles to his office in Kinross. Truth to tell, he set off ridiculously early because that way he could escape the hell that was breakfast with his three children. Other people's kids seemed to be able to rub along pretty well, but his daughter and two sons existed in a state of constant warfare that had only intensified now the teenage hormones were starting to kick in. It started as soon as their eyes opened in the morning and carried on relentless till bedtime. Which was another source of perpetual battles. He'd recently come to the conclusion that although he loved his children--at least, he supposed he did--he really didn't like them. It was a realization he could share with nobody except the birds and the wildlife on his way to and from work.
Shocking confessions! Immediate, accessible conflict! Deceit! It's not news to say that McDermid is brilliant; she has sold millions and millions of books. But I'm doing my part. Add my voice to the chorus. Thank God for McDermid's steady, smart work; she's an agent of "the good," as long as she keeps on publishing.
People say your adolescent obsessions are the things you'll write about with the most fervor, throughout the entirety of your life, and that's true for me; at sixteen, I was delighted by murder mysteries, and at thirty-five, I'm still delighted. Notice how much McDermid has happening within the first forty pages of "Out of Bounds." A guy smashes a car window, steals a car, then accidentally drives several of his friends to their deaths. His DNA happens to have a link to a cold case--someone who raped and murdered some lady twenty years ago. Meanwhile, a non-functional heir with an obsessively chattering brain worries aloud about South Asia, then wanders out of a bar and gets shot and killed--under cloudy circumstances--on a park bench. (His mother was on a plane that exploded--an apparent Ireland-based terrorist attack--twenty years ago.) And then there's Inspector Karen Pirie, mourning the premature death of her lover, forced to dust herself off and make her way through a case like a normal person (while privately aware that she is in tatters, at best).
It's the inspectors that set McDermid apart. I get frustrated with Ruth Rendell's Wexford novels; Wexford sometimes seems dull to me. And, as others have noted, the later Dalgliesh novels feature a rather insufferably priggish version of Dalgliesh. And, to me, Ian Rankin's Rebus is sometimes *too* flawed; his brooding nature and his drinking become wearying. But McDermid's inspectors tend to have--at least for me--just the right balance of Serious Intractable Problem-Besettedness and Plucky Can-Do Spirit. Tony Hill, for example, has extraordinary empathy for serial killers, and this makes him great at his job; it also means that he has a weird well of self-loathing, or discomfort, and he can't ever have sex with anyone. (I'd read about Tony Hill through twenty, thirty volumes, if I could--and maybe I one day will be able to, if McDermid keeps going.) There's the guy in McDermid's "A Place of Execution" (called by Rendell one of the greatest crime novels in history) who rushes to judgment and causes a big heap of consternation, despite good intentions. And there's the reporter in the same novel, eager to cash in on a morally-fraught bit of reporting, and yet also in possession of a decent set of ethical principles. McDermid gives these reasonably likable characters riveting workplace issues--a mole in the office, a piggish supervisor, a slow-witted assistant--so you feel like you're encountering a report on your own work life, every few pages, even in the midst of murder and terrorism.
I often wish literary fiction would borrow from McDermid. I recently abandoned "Run," by Ann Patchett, because it was clear that nothing interesting would happen--at least not at a rate speedier than one-gripping-event-per-one-hundred pages. No corpses, no roiling inner tension. Maile Meloy says, "Don't blame adult readers for turning to children's fiction. If you pick up a literary novel today, you might read half the book before an event takes place." I echo Meloy's brave observation--and I also want to say, if you're bored with "Run," you can always turn to "A Place of Execution," "Out of Bounds," "The Wire in the Blood." These McDermid books move briskly, and the stakes are high. Also, the writing is superb:
Roland Brown always left his house in Scotlandwell in plenty of time to cycle the six miles to his office in Kinross. Truth to tell, he set off ridiculously early because that way he could escape the hell that was breakfast with his three children. Other people's kids seemed to be able to rub along pretty well, but his daughter and two sons existed in a state of constant warfare that had only intensified now the teenage hormones were starting to kick in. It started as soon as their eyes opened in the morning and carried on relentless till bedtime. Which was another source of perpetual battles. He'd recently come to the conclusion that although he loved his children--at least, he supposed he did--he really didn't like them. It was a realization he could share with nobody except the birds and the wildlife on his way to and from work.
Shocking confessions! Immediate, accessible conflict! Deceit! It's not news to say that McDermid is brilliant; she has sold millions and millions of books. But I'm doing my part. Add my voice to the chorus. Thank God for McDermid's steady, smart work; she's an agent of "the good," as long as she keeps on publishing.
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