I based psycho on Jimmy Savile, says writer Val McDermid
VAL was deeply uneasy when she met Savile in 1977 and he inspired her character Jacko Vance who was memorably played on TV by actor John Michie.
BEST-SELLING crime writer Val McDermid has told how one of her most sinister characters was based on Savile.
The ex-journalist was deeply uneasy when she met Savile in 1977 and he later inspired her character Jacko Vance.
The TV celebrity with a secret lust for torture, murder and under-age girls first featured in the 1997 bestseller The Wire in the Blood and returned in two later books.
Vance, a former athlete, hung about hospitals and toured towns in a show called Vance’s Visits – similar to the Savile’s Travels radio show.
Val, 57, said: “People often asked me where I had got the inspiration for the character.
“They never guessed it was Savile. For a start, Jacko is handsome and charming. I assume Savile didn’t recognise himself in that description.”
Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey to be reworked by Val McDermid
Austen’s early novel is to be reimagined by the bestselling crime author for a modern audience, as a suspense-filled teen thriller
Val McDermid is to bring a “frisson of fear” to Jane Austen‘s least-read book, Northanger Abbey, after being signed to write a contemporary reworking of the gothic novel parody.
McDermid is the third author to have been asked by HarperCollins to reimagine Austen for a modern audience: Joanna Trollope’s Sense and Sensibility is out next autumn, and Curtis Sittenfeld’s Pride and Prejudice the following year. “I was genuinely gobsmacked when I got the call,” said the award-winning Scottish crime writer. “I thought, me and Jane Austen? That’s such a fucking natural pairing. But I’m absolutely delighted by the idea.”
And the news today is that The Retribution is number one in the bestseller list. It’s taken me 25 years and 25 books but I finally made it to the top! And it’s delighted me as much as anything else I’ve achieved in my career…
