McDermid's acclaimed new book, left, has created a demand for her earlier mysteries, like 'Clean Break,' her 1995 novel featuring Manchester private eye Kate Brannigan. McDermid is an admirer of Ruth Rendell, who started out writing her fairly traditional Inspector Wexford mysteries, but for the past 20 years has been moving more and more into serious, often deeply psychological novels, often very experimental in nature. But we have that black humor that sustains us. McDermid certainly has a great sense of humor. McDermid, who's openly gay, writes both series with such finesse that you might have trouble figuring out her real proclivities if you didn't know better.
Nobody's a one-trick pony.
We all have different facets and we tend to be different people when we're with different people. Each of my characters has some elements of me in them, but none of them is all me. McDermid says she keeps the two radically different detective series going because she likes that sort of variety as a writer. She also decided long ago not to use her Lindsay Gordon character to put across any pro-lesbian messages. I've always written about the gay experience as part of the continuum of the world.