Thursday, July 17, 2014

Val McDermid 'very proud' to have mortuary named after her

Murder mystery author's fundraising efforts honoured by eponymous new University of Dundee facility

Val McDermid Mortuary
Smiles all round … Val McDermid at the official naming of the new mortuary. Photograph: Dave Martin/Fotopress Dundee

William Wordsworth has a school named after him, Charles Dickens has a pub and Jane Austen a road. Scotland's murder mystery supremo Val McDermid has just discovered that she is to be given a rather more unusual accolade, after the University of Dundee said it would be christening its new morgue in her honour.

The Val McDermid Mortuary will also feature the Stuart MacBride Dissecting Room, after another of Scotland's top crime writers, and a collection of new submersion tanks named after the likes of Jeffery Deaver, Kathy Reichs and Harlan Coben. The unusual choice of names follows a campaign from the university to raise £1m to build a new morgue, which the crime authors backed, asking members of the public to vote for the writer for whom they would like the morgue to be named, and donate money. McDermid came in first.
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