CRIME writer Val ­McDermid has finally ­accepted her fame – after being namechecked on Coronation Street.

Maureen Lipman’s character Evelyn Plummer declared that she was “going to bed” with one of her thrillers on the long-running soap.

Her name has also just been the answer to a question on quiz show The Chase.

Despite being one of the world’s most successful crime writers, she modestly refuses to take her success for granted.

Kirkcaldy-born Val, 68, who has sold more than 19million books – with her 39th novel, Past Lying, just published – said: “I look at my life sometimes and I think, ‘Really, how did that happen?’

“Maureen Lipman namechecked me on Coronation Street, in a scene with Tyrone, saying, ‘This television is rubbish. I’m going to bed with Val McDermid’ and she picked up a book and went off. I should get a T-shirt made.

“I never imagined I would ever be mentioned on ­Coronation Street but then there are very many aspects of my life that I never imagined.

“I think writers all live in a state of perpetual self-doubt.

“I remember hearing Nobel Prize winner William Golding, who wrote Lord of the Flies, being interviewed on the radio and the interviewer said, ‘You must have a tremendous sense of relief when you finish a book?’

“He said, ‘There is a kind of relief but there is also absolute terror that I’m not going to be able to do it again’. I know what he meant.

“Hand on heart, when I started writing I thought I maybe had five or six books in me. This is my 39th novel. I’ve even been the answer to a question on The Chase. I’ve been very lucky.”

Val’s latest book, Past Lying, sees the return of her cold case ­detective Karen Pirie, now the star of a major television series ­starring Outlander’s Lauren Lyle.

The gripping thriller finds DCI Pirie investigating the unsolved case of a young Edinburgh ­University student who vanished from her own doorstep.

Pirie’s team find themselves in possession of an author’s ­unpublished manuscript where the plot has chilling similarities to the student’s disappearance.

Several characters in the book are crime writers. Val enjoyed creating them and insists they’re not based on anyone she knows.

She said: “I wrote a book some years ago called Killing the Shadows, where crime writers were being murdered by the means of their devising.

“But this is much more about being inside the world of writers – a peek behind the curtains

“I’ve already had people try to map the characters on to real writers and say, ‘That’s so and so’ but it’s really not.”

Val’s Karen Pirie novels are one series of many she has written since her first book was published in 1987.

The former Daily Record ­journalist was best known in the early days of her crime-writing career for her Wire in the Blood series, which became a TV show starring Robson Green and Hermione Norris.

Other novels she has written include her series featuring journalist Allie Burns and another featuring private detective Kate Brannigan. Val said: “When you go out with one set of pals one weekend, then you go out with a different set of pals the next weekend you don’t mix them up in your head.

“When I have a story idea it depends on the story as to what character it might involve.

“Sometimes a story can only really have a cop character at the heart of it. Sometimes you need a journalist.

“And if the story doesn’t fit one of the characters I’ve already got, I create someone new. That’s how Karen Pirie started. I needed a cold case detective.”

Val was thrilled by the Pirie adaptation broadcast last year on STV.

She is looking forward to the filming of the second series which begins in the
new year.

She said: “I think the TV series brought a lot of people to the books.

“To be honest that’s the only reason why
you ever agree to an adaptation – because you want people to read your book.

“Lauren absolutely nailed the role of Karen.

“She doesn’t look like the Karen Pirie in my head, I have to say. But that doesn’t really matter because she’s got all the characteristics of Karen Pirie.

“She’s gallus. She’s brave. She’s bloody-minded. She’s funny. She doesn’t take no for an answer.

“Lauren is such a talented actor – the whole team were really talented. I’ve been well served.”

● Past Lying, A Karen Pirie Thriller, published by Sphere.