McDermid Debut Award Winner | 2025
In July 2025, David Goodman was announced as the winner of the McDermid Debut Award for his debut novel, A Reluctant Spy.
The high-concept spy thriller is about a tech executive who agrees to lend his identity to an elite intelligence agency in return for a helping hand through life, but gets far more than he bargained for when he finds himself in hostile territory having to do the job of a trained espionage operative to avoid a global conflict. David Goodman is a writer of espionage and speculative fiction who lives in East Lothian, Scotland.
Previous Winners
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The inaugural McDermid Debut Award, named in recognition of world-famous crime writer Val McDermid, was won by Marie Tierney for her novel Deadly Animals.
Deadly Animals features road–kill obsessed teenager Ava Bonney, who discovers the mauled body of a schoolmate and embarks on a daring quest to unravel the truth behind the string of chilling deaths plaguing her Birmingham community. Birmingham-born Marie Tierney, who now lives in the Fens, worked in education before becoming a full-time writer. She received a £500 cash prize, as well as an engraved beer cask handcrafted by one of Britain’s last coopers from Theakston’s Brewery.