The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Why Sue Black respects crime writers who do their homework
Celebrated forensic anthropologist in conversation with author Val McDermid at Edinburgh International Book Festival
Leading forensic anthropologist Professor Dame Sue Black has revealed she never reads crime fiction because it is often inaccurate.
Prof Black, who was for 15 years professor of Anatomy and Forensic Anthropology at Dundee University, has visited crime scenes all over the world, including Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Iraq, identifying victims and perpetrators of crime.
Speaking at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in conversation with her friend, bestselling Scottish crime writer Val McDermid, she said she does not read crime fiction and rarely watches it.
She said she has a huge amount of respect for “a good handful” of crime writers, including McDermid, who take their research of her specialist subject very seriously.
She said: “Somebody asked me which was my favourite Ian Rankin book, and I said ‘his next one’, because I don’t read crime fiction.
“I very rarely watch crime fiction. Most of it is of limited quality, but what I have always genuinely said is that I have a huge amount of respect for those crime writers who do their research, and there are a good handful of those who take it very seriously.”
“(Val) shows that she respects her readers. She wants it to be as realistic as possible. She doesn’t want to just make it up and so her research is really intensive.”
Prof Black, whose recent book, All That Remains, offers insights into mortality and the value of forensic science, recounted how on one occasion McDermid had come to her to discover how it felt to strangle someone to death to inform one of her crime novels.
She said: “Val wanted to know what it’s like to strangle somebody to death so she came in to my department to see what the hyoid bone looks like and what it feels like.
“She had this moment of feeling the spring on the hyoid bone and then snapped it so that she knows exactly what it feels like to break, fracture, somebody’s hyoid bone.
“That to me is credit to those crime writers who take the respect very seriously. Some don’t but there are some that do.”
Prof Black said that McDermid, from Kirkcaldy, would often phone her looking for inspiration for her books and her science had appeared in novels before any scientific journal.
She added: “She phones you up and she’s all nicey, and you know she’s on a fishing expedition.
“It will be ‘what are you working on, any interesting cases?’ And before you know it my science has got in to her novel before it’s got in to any of my scientific journals.”
Prof Black said she wrote her own book because “death is always with us” like a companion.
She said: “Many of us are five seconds away from death at any point and we just don’t know it. If that thing is going to happen, you may as well get to know your companion.”
She added: “What happens around the dead is that the living make them scary, the dead have never scared me or freaked me out – the living are terrifying.”