Crime writer Val McDermid has told how covering tragedies such as the Lockerbie bombing as a journalist have left her mentally scarred.
The best-selling author says the year 1989, when she wrote about Lockerbie and the Hillsborough disaster, was a turning point in her life – and that’s why 1989 is the name of her new novel.
The 67-year-old, who worked for our sister paper The People for a decade, said: “After Hillsborough and Lockerbie I thought I can’t do this indefinitely.
"I packed a lot of the grief and horror in the back of my mind during the aftermath but so many lives had been broken and I just thought doing this job wrecks you either way.
“You either take it all in but it damages you. Or you don’t let any of it touch you and that damages you another way. I have nothing but admiration for journalists who can do that job all their working lives but I knew I couldn’t do it.”
The Lockerbie bombing happened in the days before Christmas in 1988 and Hillsborough shocked the nation in April 1989. Val worked extensively on both of these major stories. Hillsborough, she said, haunts her to this day.
She said: “I sat with families who had lost people. I saw their grief and their fears as they hunted for their relatives that day and I saw first-hand the way they were treated in the aftermath.
“I have nothing but admiration for the way the families stepped up to the mark and fought for the truth of what really happened that day to be known.
“Many of us as journalists didn’t believe the rubbish we were being fed and in the early days the official lines from the police were unchallengeable despite the fact every witness to the tragedy had the same story.
"It was an awful thing to be a part of and after it I realised it was time to move on to something else." Although the Lockerbie and Hillsborough disasters are covered by her fictional journalist, Allie Burns, in the new book, she insists it is not an autobiography.
She said: “I’ve drawn on my experiences as a reporter but Allie Burns isn’t me. She gets a lot of my anecdotes. My personal life was way more fun than hers for a start. I was young, I had money in my pocket, I was living in Manchester and I was single. The very opposite of Allie’s life in 1989.”
Working back from the year before the pandemic hit, Val is crafting a series of stories that chronicles the societal changes and media landscape through the decades and is interwoven with her trademark murderous back story.
1989 also includes a central figure who bears an uncanny resemblance to shamed media tycoon Robert Maxwell.
In 1989, Glasgow-born Burns is living with girlfriend Rona in Manchester, working as a reporter covering northern England for a tabloid whose owner is in a battle with Rupert Murdoch.
As well as covering tragic events, the novel also delves deeply into the AIDS crisis and the final years of Thatcher and the Iron Curtain.
Val said: “1989 comes from a lot of material to work with and it’s a reminder of how far we have come in some areas but in others we haven’t really moved on that much.
“Allie Burns is fighting prejudice on a lot of fronts and that’s something I’m still familiar with even today.”
1989 by Val McDermid is out now.
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