There is no mystery to solve: Ian Rankin did it, in an interview, with the word “lesbian”.

Britain’s bestselling crime writer found himself condemned as “offensive” by a leading female rival yesterday after suggesting that women authors, and gay ones in particular, are more bloodthirsty than men. The acclaimed writer of the Inspector Rebus novels said in an interview last year: “The people writing the most graphic novels today are women. They are mostly lesbians as well, which I find interesting.”

Speaking to an audience at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Val McDermid quoted the remark almost word for word, attributing it to “a very prominent Scottish male writer”. She then dismissed it as “arrant rubbish”.

The author, who is a lesbian, added: “I find that statement so offensive, I can’t even begin to start — apart from the fact that a lot of what is being written by the very talented young Scottish male writers is not shying away from depicting violence very directly. But there are certain kinds of books in which the only way in which you can be honest is to write about violence in a very direct way, to say, ‘This is what it is’.

“It’s not something that is amusing, it’s not something that is a cheap thrill, it’s not something that is a groovy pornography to get off on. It hurts, it damages the lives of everyone it touches.”

McDermid is the author of The Wire in the Blood, which has been adapted for television. She has received a clutch of awards for her books. A miner’s daughter from Fife who was admitted to Oxford University when she was 16, she was a crime reporter for many years before turning to fiction.

She worked in tough, allegedly sexist newsrooms in Manchester and Glasgow and believes that the world of crime fiction is no better.

“I’ll tell you what pisses me off more than almost anything: when people say, ‘As a woman, how do you feel about writing on violence?’ Have you ever heard a male crime writer being asked, ‘As a man, how do you feel about writing about violence?’

“There’s a profound disassociation, it seems to me; as if somehow it’s wrong for us to be writing about violence against women, as though somehow we need permission to write about violence against women.”

McDermid is one of several prominent lesbian thriller writers, including Patricia Cornwell, Louise Welsh and Manda Scott.

Rankin defended himself at the festival yesterday, saying that his original comments had been intended as part of a broader discussion about the younger generation of crime fiction writers. “It’s not just about lesbians. It seems to me that to get into the Top Ten it helps, if you are a woman, if you write quite violent books. It helps if you are a man if you don’t.”

Crime fiction written by both sexes was becoming increasingly gory, he added. “Some of it might be the influence of film on crime writers: the interest in serial killers, for example. Maybe it’s self-perpetuating, where violence in films begets violence in books begets more violence when they are turned into films.”

Women now write more than half of all crime fiction novels and their books are read by a predominantly female audience. In a survey for Woman & Home magazine last year, half the respondents said that crime fiction was their favourite genre, with romance the least popular.

What they read is not for the faint-hearted. McDermid’s The Last Temptation features a killer whose signature is to take a pubic “scalp” from his victims. The Treatment by Mo Hayder has a crazed killer who forces a man to rape his own child.

In Heartsick, a thriller published this month from the American writer Chelsea Cain, a beautiful serial killer captures the detective who is hunting her and tortures him. She hammers nails into his ribs, pours bleach down his throat, and finally removes his spleen without anaesthetic. At that point, flooded with compassion, she calls for an ambulance.

Some women crime writers have argued that what they produce is less gratuitous than the violence in books by men because it tends to emphasise the consequences of abuse and killing. Others suggest that the visceral style of so many female crime writers stems from their greater awareness of the threat of sexual violence.

As Tana French, the author of In the Woods, has put it: “From childhood we know that there are people out there for whom \ is enough to transform us from a person into prey.

“Women understand, in a way, that danger lurks every time you walk home alone at night, every time a stranger asks you for directions on a deserted street, every time you’re home on your own and there’s a strange breeze moving through the curtains.”

Graphic writing

From Beneath the Bleeding by Val McDermid:
Dr Tony Hill, a criminal profiler, is put in hospital by a deranged psychiatric hospital inmate and from his hospital bed seeks to piece together the cause of a series of apparently motiveless killings.

“Carnage, Tony thought as a burly figure emerged from the corridor, swinging a fire axe in front of himself as if it were a scythe and he a grim reaper. His jeans and polo shirt were spattered with blood; the blade of the axe shed a fine spray with every swing. The burly man was intent on his prey, steadily pursuing them as they retreated. ‘Bring them to him. Nowhere to hide,’ he said in a low monotone. ‘Bring them to him. Nowhere to hide.’ He was gaining on them. Another couple of strides and the axe blade would be slicing through flesh again.”

Explore Books

• Book Extracts

• Book Reviews

• Books Group

• Audio Books

Times Recommends

• The 100 Best Books of the Decade
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• The conversation: James Ellroy