] Talk Time: Val McDermid
]
]
] Crime author Val McDermid's book, The Distant Echo, is
] out now
]
]
] Interviewed by Hamish Mackintosh
]
] Thursday August 7, 2003
]
] The Guardian
]
]
] Do you keep up with advances in computer profiling and
] databasing? I try to stay as up to date as I can but I
] tend to rely on carbon sources rather than silicon. It is
] much better to talk to the people who do this kind of
] stuff as they tell you what you want to know, but also
] stuff you didn't realise you wanted to know! The science
] is changing very quickly. When I wrote Killing The
] Shadows, the geographic profiling software was only being
] beta tested and wasn't being used in live situations.
] When the book came out, people were beginning to trial it
] in live situations. By last year's Washington sniper
] case, the FBI called upon Dr Kim Rossmo, the guy who
] developed the system I use in my book.
]
] How involved are you in running your site? I have a
] webmistress who takes care of all the practical stuff -
] it could eat up my entire life if I did it myself. She's
] known me since I was 18 so she knows how I want to come
] across. We do newsletters and I'm pretty active on the
] forum, which has become its own little discussion group.
] I sometimes want to bang on the computer screen and shout
] "never mind about Jeffrey Deaver and Michael