... The crime writer Val McDermid has revealed she was assigned a “sensitivity reader” to remove language that could cause offence from her earlier works.

The Scottish author has sold more than 19m novels worldwide and is known for the authenticity of the dialogue in her work.

The books she wrote in the 1980s and 1990s featured characters in law enforcement who used racial and homophobic slurs to reflect attitudes that were prevalent at the time.

Speaking at the Out in the Hills festival in Pitlochry, an LGBTQ+ event, she spoke out about the changes she agreed to make before her Lindsay Gordon books are republished.

McDermid, referred to as the queen of crime, said it was dishonest to make authors change their previous work to “conform” to modern-day sensibilities, The Times reported.
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