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Portrait image of Val McDermid Photo: Ola Erikson / Forflex

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McDermid, Val

Val McDermid is a Scottish crime writer born in Kirkcaldy, Fife. She attended Kirkcaldy High School where she was among a group of pupils that participated in a controversial project for especially talented students based on IQ tests.
When she was seventeen, she was the first student from a Scottish state school to be admitted to St. Hilda’s College, Oxford, where she graduated with a Bachelor o...

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Literary figures

Kommissarie Modeste Laviolette

Gender: Male

The somewhat misanthropic and contemplative Inspector Modeste Laviolette is working in Provence. He is overweight and he loves food and champagne. He has followed in his grandfather’s footsteps; his grandfather was chief of police. Laviolette is a bachelor and animal lover who lives with his housekeeper Chabassut and her 14 cats – he takes care of them after her death – in a string of novels by Pi...

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