Looking for all the Val McDermid books in order? I’ve organized her five crime series first, followed by her standalone fiction, short-story collections, nonfiction, and screen adaptations.
The five series follow separate casts, so you can choose the one that interests you without reading the others. Within each series, I recommend publication order because the characters’ careers, relationships, and personal histories continue from book to book.
Jump to:
- Val McDermid Books by Series
- Val McDermid Standalone Novels and Novellas
- Val McDermid Short-Story Collections
- Val McDermid Short Stories and Collaborations
- Val McDermid Nonfiction Books
- Val McDermid Graphic Novel
- Val McDermid Children’s Book
- Val McDermid TV Adaptations
- About Val McDermid
Val McDermid Books by Series
Val McDermid has written five separate series: Lindsay Gordon, Kate Brannigan, Tony Hill and Carol Jordan, Karen Pirie, and Allie Burns. I’d pick the protagonist or style that sounds most appealing, then begin with the first book in that series.
Lindsay Gordon Books
Lindsay Gordon is a Scottish journalist and amateur investigator whose assignments repeatedly draw her into murder cases. The mysteries often have political, feminist, and workplace settings, while Lindsay’s career and relationships continue across the series. My advice is to start with Report for Murder and read all six books in order.
- Report for Murder (1987)
- Common Murder (1995)
- Final Edition (1991)
- Union Jack (1999)
- Booked for Murder (2000)
- Hostage to Murder (2005)
Several Lindsay Gordon novels reached U.S. readers years after their original publication, sometimes under alternate titles. The list keeps the intended six-book series order even though the U.S. publication years don’t rise in a straight line.
Final Edition has also appeared under the titles Open and Shut and Deadline for Murder. Union Jack was published in the U.S. as Conferences Are Murder. These are alternate titles, not additional Lindsay Gordon books.
Kate Brannigan Books
Kate Brannigan is a Manchester private investigator with a talent for uncovering fraud, theft, blackmail, and white-collar crime before the cases turn more dangerous. The investigations are individually resolved, but Kate’s business and personal life develop across the six books. I recommend starting with Dead Beat and continuing in publication order.
- Dead Beat (1993)
- Kick Back (1993)
- Crack Down (1994)
- Clean Break (1995)
- Blue Genes (1996)
- Star Struck (2004)
Dead Beat and Kick Back both received U.S. editions in 1993, but the order remains the same: Dead Beat is book one and Kick Back is book two.
Tony Hill and Carol Jordan Books
This psychological crime series pairs clinical psychologist Tony Hill with police detective Carol Jordan. The cases are dark, but the continuing appeal is the complicated partnership between Tony, Carol, and the officers around them. This is the Val McDermid series I’d be least likely to read out of order because major personal and professional consequences carry directly into later books.
- The Mermaids Singing (1996)
- The Wire in the Blood (1998)
- The Last Temptation (2002)
- The Torment of Others (2005)
- Beneath the Bleeding (2008)
- Fever of the Bone (2010)
- The Retribution (2012)
- Cross and Burn (2014)
- Splinter the Silence (2015)
- Insidious Intent (2017)
- How the Dead Speak (2019)
I’d start with The Mermaids Singing. The television adaptation is called Wire in the Blood, taking its name from the second novel, but Tony Hill and Carol Jordan is the clearer name for the book series.
Karen Pirie Books
Karen Pirie works with Police Scotland’s Historic Cases Unit, reopening investigations that have gone cold and following new evidence into the past. These books often use dual timelines and show how an old crime continues to shape the present. Each investigation reaches a resolution, but Karen’s personal and professional story builds steadily, so I prefer publication order.
- The Distant Echo (2003)
- A Darker Domain (2009)
- The Skeleton Road (2014)
- Out of Bounds (2016)
- Broken Ground (2018)
- Still Life (2021)
- Past Lying (2023)
- Silent Bones (2025)
I’d begin with The Distant Echo. It introduces the kind of long-buried case that defines the series and is also the novel adapted for the first Karen Pirie television story.
Allie Burns Books
Allie Burns is an investigative journalist whose cases unfold against the political and social pressures of different decades. The numbered titles make the chronology easy to follow. I recommend reading them as 1979, 1989, and 1999, which is both publication order and story order.
Val McDermid Standalone Novels and Novellas
These books are independent of McDermid’s five recurring series, so you can read them in any order. If you want one standalone starting point, I recommend A Place of Execution, a layered mystery that moves between a 1960s investigation and its later consequences.
- A Place of Execution (2000)
- Killing the Shadows (2001)
- The Grave Tattoo (2007)
- Trick of the Dark (2011)
- The Vanishing Point (2012)
- Northanger Abbey (2014)
- Queen Macbeth (2024)
- This Door of the Seas (with Jo Sharp) (2027)
Northanger Abbey is McDermid’s modern reimagining of Jane Austen’s novel for the multi-author Austen Project. Queen Macbeth and This Door of the Seas are compact historical works connected to the publisher-led Darkland Tales project, but they stand on their own and don’t require the books by other contributors.
Val McDermid Short-Story Collections
These are collections of McDermid’s own short fiction. I think they’re more useful to most readers than a long list of multi-author anthologies that happen to contain one of her stories.
- The Writing on the Wall and Other Stories (1997)
- Stranded (2005)
- Cross Roads (2013)
- Gunpowder Plots (2013)
- Christmas Is Murder (2020)
The Writing on the Wall and Other Stories was published as a limited UK collection in 1997. Cross Roads contains two stories, while Gunpowder Plots collects three. The linked Christmas Is Murder is the expanded 2020 collection; a shorter collection using the same title appeared in 2000.
Val McDermid Short Stories and Collaborations
McDermid has written and contributed many individual stories, so I’ve kept this section focused on separately published short work and contributions with clear interest for readers of her novels.
- Cleanskin (2006)
- Footloose (2017) (Short Story) (found in MatchUp)
- The Second Murder at the Vicarage (2022) (Short Story) (found in Marple: Twelve New Mysteries)
Cleanskin is a separately published Quick Read. “Footloose” crosses Tony Hill with Peter James’s Roy Grace and first appeared in MatchUp; it belongs here rather than in the numbered Tony Hill and Carol Jordan novels. “The Second Murder at the Vicarage” is McDermid’s contribution to the Miss Marple collection Marple: Twelve New Mysteries.
Val McDermid Nonfiction Books
McDermid’s nonfiction draws on her interest in crime, investigation, Scottish places, and lived experience. I’d choose Forensics for the strongest connection to her crime fiction, while My Scotland and Winter are more personal.
- A Suitable Job for a Woman: Inside the World of Women Private Eyes (1999)
- Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA, and More Tell Us About Crime (2015)
- My Scotland (2019)
- Imagine a Country: Ideas for a Better Future (edited with Jo Sharp) (2020)
- Winter: The Story of a Season (2026)
Forensics was published in the UK as Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime. Imagine a Country is an edited collection of essays and ideas from numerous contributors, rather than a solely authored Val McDermid book.
Val McDermid Graphic Novel
McDermid adapted her BBC Radio 4 drama Resistance into a graphic novel illustrated by Kathryn Briggs. It follows a journalist investigating the spread of a drug-resistant infection and is separate from McDermid’s crime series.
- Resistance (2021) (Graphic Novel)
Val McDermid Children’s Book
McDermid has also written a picture book in verse about a grandmother with a swashbuckling secret. It’s unrelated to her adult crime fiction, but it is a distinct authored book and belongs in a complete guide.
- My Granny Is a Pirate (2012) (Children’s Picture Book)
Val McDermid TV Adaptations
Several of McDermid’s books and characters have been adapted for television. These are the main adaptations readers are most likely to look for after finishing the books:
- Wire in the Blood is based on characters and stories from the Tony Hill and Carol Jordan novels.
- Karen Pirie adapts the Karen Pirie books, beginning with The Distant Echo.
- A Place of Execution was adapted as a television miniseries based on the standalone novel.
Traces was developed from an original idea by McDermid, but it is not an adaptation of one of her books.
About Val McDermid
Val McDermid was born in Fife, Scotland, on June 4, 1955. She entered St Hilda’s College, Oxford, at 17 to study English and was the first student from a Scottish state school admitted to the college.
After university, McDermid worked as a journalist before becoming a full-time fiction writer. Her work spans crime novels, psychological thrillers, short fiction, nonfiction, drama, radio, and screen, and her books have been translated into more than 40 languages.
Her honors include the Crime Writers’ Association’s Cartier Diamond Dagger for outstanding achievement and the Lambda Literary Foundation’s Pioneer Award. She lives in Scotland.
Looking for similar books in order?
If you want more mystery authors and reading-order guides like this one, start with my Mystery Books in Order index.