“The Scottish crime writer Val McDermid has re-ignited a row about violence in detective fiction written by women. Speaking at the Edinburgh books festival, she attacked bestselling local author Ian Rankin for suggesting that ‘the people writing the most graphic violence today are women … they are mostly lesbians as well’. McDermid, who is a lesbian, rejected Rankin’s remarks – made in an interview with the Independent last year – as ‘arrant rubbish’.”