Daggers drawn as Rankin slated over lesbian remark

Published on Wednesday 15 August 2007 00:29

A SPAT between Britain's two best-selling crime writers exploded into the open last night at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

Val McDermid angrily tore into a remark made by Ian Rankin highlighting the apparent tendency of lesbian writers to pen violent crime scenes.

The Rebus author said in an interview last year: "The people writing the most graphic novels today are women. They are mostly lesbians as well, which I find interesting."

Although McDermid did not mention Rankin by name, referring merely to "a very prominent Scottish male writer", she quoted the remark almost word for word before describing it as "arrant rubbish".

The author, who is a lesbian, added: "I find that statement so offensive, I can't even begin to start - apart from the fact that a lot of what is being written by the very talented young Scottish male writers is not shying away from depicting violence very directly.

"But there are certain kinds of books in which the only way in which you can be honest is to write about violence in a very direct way, to say, 'This is what it is'.

"It's not something that is amusing, it's not something that is a cheap thrill, it's not something that is a groovy pornography to get off on. It hurts, it damages the lives of everyone it touches."

Referring to the criminal-profiler protagonist of her latest book, Beneath the Bleeding, McDermid added: "Writing the Tony Hill books, for example - this is a guy whose job is to reason backwards from the crime to the perpetrator - it would be perverse not to detail what the crime is."

Fife-born McDermid pointed out that Rankin had also written violent scenes. "Have you forgotten the chilling opening to Mortal Causes, for example?"

Rankin could not be contacted for comment last night.

Speaking at the book festival event, McDermid later widened the debate further.

"I'll tell you what pisses me off more than almost anything. When people say, 'As a woman, how do you feel about writing on violence?' Have you ever heard a male crime writer being asked, 'As a man, how do you feel about writing about violence?'

"There's a profound disassociation, it seems to me, as if somehow it's wrong for us to be writing about violence against women, as though somehow we need permission to write about violence against women."

McDermid also claimed that there was a bias against books by women writers being reviewed in newspapers.

"Blinkered" male buyers for book chains also came in for attack.

McDermid said she was sitting next to the thriller-buyer for a major chain at a trade dinner: "He was ... talking about his new job, and he said, 'I had no idea of how much reading was going to be involved in this'.

"Then he said, 'Of course, I don't read books by women'. And this is one of the most powerful purchasers in the country. And he doesn't read books by women.

"What I wanted to do was to grab him by the throat, smack him against the wall and say, 'You stupid a***hole!' But what I actually said was, 'Perhaps you might like to try one of mine?'"