The old saying would have you believe that 'crime doesn't pay' but the burgeoning canon of fictitious crime says otherwise. We investigate eight authors headed for Edinburgh International Book Festival who have crime working in their favour

Paula Hawkins
Previously a writer of romantic comedies Hawkins' 2015 novel The Girl on the Train is a tense thriller exploring alcohol abuse, broken relationships and unreliable narrators. The book dominated the bestseller list with a film adaption starring Emily Blunt due for release in October. Hawkins featured on the Forbes list of highest-paid authors 2016, ahead of George RR Martin.
13 Aug, 7.15pm, £12 (£10)

Lin Anderson
Anderson is the creator of both forensic scientist Rhona MacLeod and private investigator Patrick de Courvoisier. Anderson's tenth Rhona MacLeod novel was shortlisted for the 2015 Scottish Crime Book of the Year and 2016's None but the Dead is on the longlist for the McIlvanney Prize. She also supports the crimes of others, co-founding Bloody Scotland crime writing festival.
15 Aug, 7pm, £8 (£6)

Alex Gray
Gray's most recent novel The Darkest Goodbye is the 13th novel starring DCI William Lorimer, often aided in his cases by psychologist and criminal profiler Dr Solomon Brightman. Set on the gritty streets of Glasgow, Lorimer's investigations have seen murdered Kelvin FC football players, bodies in the river Clyde and security threats to the Commonwealth Games.
15 Aug, 8.30pm, £8 (£6)

Ian Rankin
Rankin is the creator of Edinburgh-based detective John Rebus, who has sipped whisky, played vinyl and solved crimes for nearly 30 years across 20 novels. Bestsellers on several continents, the series has been translated into 22 languages. Rankin has received numerous awards, honorary doctorates and an OBE. Rebus has now retired from the force but it hasn't slowed him down.
16 Aug, 8.15pm, £12 (£10); 18 Aug, 8.15pm £12 (£10); 24 Aug, 8.15pm, £12 (£10)

Stuart MacBride
Published in January, In the Cold Hard Ground is MacBride's tenth full-length novel starring tenacious detective Logan McRae and his foul-mouthed superior Steel. The pair have hunted some of Aberdeen's worst criminals, including a human butcher in a Margaret Thatcher mask. MacBride also makes a mean plate of stovies, winning the World Stovie Championship in 2014.
19 Aug, 7.15pm, £12 (£10)

Val McDermid
McDermid is the author of multiple crime series with protagonists including journalist Lindsay Gordon, PI Kate Brannigan, Inspector Karen Pirie and the dynamic duo of psychologist Tony Hill and DCI Carol Jordan. She has sold over 11 million copies worldwide and her gripping fiction can be enjoyed in 30 different languages.
22 Aug, 8.15pm, £12 (£10)

Mark Billingham
Actor, comic and screenwriter Mark Billingham is the author of 13 crime novels starring London-based DI Tom Thorne, as well as several stand-alone thrillers. His first book was adapted for television in 2010, starring David Morrissey as Thorne, and later works In the Dark and Time of Death are both being adapted for the BBC.
27 Aug, 8.45pm, £12 (£10)

Ragnar Jonasson
Reykjavik-born Jonasson is the author of the Dark Iceland series of novels, comprising Snowblind, Nightblind and Blackout. With two more in the Siglufjörður-based series still to come TV rights have been sold to the company who produced documentary Amy. Jonasson is also the co-founder of Iceland Noir, the Reykjavik international crime writing festival.
28 Aug, 8.30pm, £8 (£6)