Val McDermid is a Scottish novelist of crime fiction, best known for her suspense novels featuring Tony Hill and Carol Jordan. Her other characters include lesbian journalist Lindsay Gordon and private investigator Kate Brannigan. McDermid considers her books to fall under the Tartan Noir crime fiction genre.

McDermid’s first novel was Report for Murder in 1987, part of the Lindsay Gordon series. Since ’87, she has written several different novels in all three of her series. Below is a list of Val McDermid’s published works in order of when they were originally released and in chronological order:

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Publication Order of Allie Burns Books

Publication Order of Inspector Karen Pirie Books

Publication Order of Kate Brannigan Books

Publication Order of Lindsay Gordon Books

Report For Murder (1987)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Common Murder (1989)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Final Edition / Open and Shut / Deadline for Murder (1991)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Union Jack / Conferences Are Murder (1993)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Booked For Murder (1996)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Final Edition (With: V.L. McDermid) (1997)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Hostage To Murder (2003)Description / Buy at Amazon.com

Publication Order of Tony Hill/Carol Jordan Books

The Mermaids Singing (1995)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
The Wire In The Blood (1997)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
The Last Temptation (2002)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
The Torment of Others (2004)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Beneath the Bleeding (2007)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Fever of the Bone (2009)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
The Retribution (2011)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Cross and Burn (2013)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Splinter the Silence (2015)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Insidious Intent (2017)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Footloose (With: Peter James) (2019)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
How the Dead Speak (2019)Description / Buy at Amazon.com

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

A Place of Execution (1999)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Killing the Shadows (2000)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
The Grave Tattoo (2006)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Trick of the Dark (2010)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
The Vanishing Point (2012)Description / Buy at Amazon.com

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Short Story Collections

Writing on the Wall and Other Stories (1997)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Stranded (2004)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Christmas is Murder (2020)Description / Buy at Amazon.com

Publication Order of Graphic Novels

Publication Order of Picture Books

My Granny Is a Pirate (2012)Description / Buy at Amazon.com

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

A Suitable Job for a Woman (1994)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA and More Tell Us About Crime (2014)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
My Scotland (2019)Description / Buy at Amazon.com

Publication Order of Austen Project Books

Sense & Sensibility (By: Joanna Trollope) (2013)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Northanger Abbey (2014)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Emma (By: Alexander McCall Smith) (2014)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Eligible (By: Curtis Sittenfeld) (2016)Description / Buy at Amazon.com

Publication Order of The MatchUp Collection Books

Honor & ... (By: C.J. Box,Sandra Brown) (2017)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Deserves to Be Dead (By: John Sandford,Lisa Jackson) (2017)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Getaway (By: Lisa Scottoline,Nelson DeMille) (2017)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Midnight Flame (By: Christopher Rice,Lara Adrian) (2018)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Short Story (By: Karin Slaughter,Michael Koryta) (2019)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Past Prologue (By: Diana Gabaldon,Steve Berry) (2019)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Faking a Murderer (By: Lee Child,Kathy Reichs) (2019)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Dig Here (By: Charlaine Harris,Andrew Gross) (2019)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Taking the Veil (By: J.A. Jance,Eric Van Lustbader) (2019)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Rambo on Their Minds (By: Gayle Lynds,David Morrell) (2019)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Footloose (With: Peter James) (2019)Description / Buy at Amazon.com

Publication Order of Murderous Christmas Stories Books

Murder under the Christmas Tree: Ten Classic Crime Stories for the Festive Season (2016)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Murder on Christmas Eve (2017)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
A Very Murderous Christmas: Ten Classic Crime Stories for the Festive Season (2018)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Anthology series.

Publication Order of Anthologies

12 Days: A Modern Twist on The Twelve Days of Christmas(2000)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Naked Came the Phoenix(2001)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
The World's Finest Mystery and Crime Stories 3(2002)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Tart Noir(2003)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Like a Charm(2004)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
The Adventure of the Missing Detective and 19 of the Year's Finest Crime and Mystery Stories(2005)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Magnetic North(2005)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
A Merry Band of Murderers(2006)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Criminal Tendencies(2009)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
The Sounds Of Crime(2010)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
The Library Book(2012)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
The Killer Cookbook(2012)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Inherit the Dead(2013)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
OxCrimes: 27 Killer Stories from the Cream of Crimewriters(2014)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Out There: An Anthology of Scottish LGBT writing(2014)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Crime Writers: A Decade of Crime(2016)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Crime Plus Music(2016)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
MatchUp(2017)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Exit Wounds(2019)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Bloody Scotland(2019)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Imagine A Country(2020)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Marple: Twelve New Mysteries(2022)Description / Buy at Amazon.com

Notes: Final Edition was published as both Open and Shut and Deadline for Murder in the United States. Union Jack was published as Conferences are Murder in the United States. Naked Came the Phoenix is a collaborative novel with contributions by Nevada Barr, Mary Jane Clark, Diana Gabaldon, J.A. Jance, Faye Kellerman, Laurie R. King, Perri O’Shaughnessy, Anne Perry, Nancy Pickard, J.D. Robb, Lisa Scottoline and Marcia Talley. Magnetic North also contains contributions by Neil Astley, Andrew Crumey, Julia Darling, Sean O’Brien and Jacob Polley.

If You Like Val McDermid Books, You’ll Love…

Val McDermid Synopses: A Place of Execution is a standalone novel by Val McDermid. December, 1963: Two children have vanished from the Manchester streets; Myra Hindley and Ian Brady’s criminal careers have begun. Another child goes missing on a cold winter day: Alison Carter, a young girl of thirteen, vanishes from her isolated community, which has little faith in the outside world. It marks the beginning of George Bennett’s most difficult and traumatic case, a young inspector who just got promoted: a murder without a body, an investigation with more dead ends and closed faces than he would have discovered in the anonymity of the inner city, and a result that has reverberated over time. He finally tells his story to journalist Catherine Heathcote after decades, but Bennett unjustly tries to pull the plug just as the book is about to be published. He holds new information that he refuses to share, information that poses a threat to his very existence. The results of Catherine’s forced re-investigation of the past turn the world upside down.

In Killing the Shadows by Val McDermid, a murderer is on the loose who blurs the line between reality and fiction. The authors of crime novels who have made psychological profilers into heroes of the 1990s are his prey. However, this savage is unlike any other. The conventional wisdom regarding the motivations and workings of serial killers is shattered by his bloodlust. And the desperate search for his identity becomes a matter of life and death for one woman.

The Grave Tattoo is a standalone title by Val McDermid. Long-forgotten old wives’ tales take on a chilling new credence when a bizarrely tattooed body is discovered on a hillside in the Lake District after torrential summer rains. Lakelanders have been spreading the rumor that Fletcher Christian orchestrated the massacre on Pitcairn so that he could return home for centuries. He also told his story to William Wordsworth, an old friend and classmate, who turned it into a long narrative poem. Wordsworth kept the poem a secret so that he wouldn’t face the gallows for keeping a fugitive. Jane Gresham, a Wordsworth expert and Lake District native, is driven to determine definitively whether the manuscript ever existed and whether it is still in existence today. However, death relentlessly pursues her as she follows each new lead. Jane finds herself suddenly at the center of a 200-year-old mystery with the potential to endanger lives. A drama of life and death unfolds against the dramatic backdrop of England’s Lake District, with millions of dollars as the ultimate prize.

Order of Books » Authors » Order of Val McDermid Books

5 Responses to “Order of Val McDermid Books”

  1. Marilyn Hollenbaugh: 7 years ago

    Need some help here: OUT OF BOUNDS p.374, “to keep the ASPIDISTRA flying”? My efforts only reveal the plant and Greek “shield”. What is the author’s meaning?

    Reply

    • Sheila Jones: 6 years ago

      Couldn’t find the passage at page 374 in my paperback edition. I’d have to read it in context to try and explain the meaning. Sorry.

      Reply

    • Sarah: 4 months ago

      Aspidistra are a common houseplant in the UK, and might be seen as representative of the self-satisfaction of the middle-classes. “Keep the Aspidistra Flying” is the title of a social criticism novel by George Orwell, published in 1936 – McDermid is referencing this, and it might be seen as a tongue in cheek rallying cry for the middle-class.

      Reply

  2. John Overend: 11 years ago

    I have now read five of her novels and have another four at the ready. I am hooked on her stories.

    Reply

  3. John Overend: 11 years ago

    Read my first Val McDermid novel (Beneath the Bleeding) – will certainly be reading more of her work – first class!

    Reply

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