Kinn Hamilton McIntosh^[1] MBE (born 20 June 1930), known professionally as Catherine Aird, is an English novelist. She is the author of more than twenty crime fiction novels and several collections of short stories. Her witty, literate, and deftly plotted novels straddle the "cozy" and "police procedural" genres and are somewhat similar in flavour to those of Martha Grimes, Caroline Graham, M. C. Beaton, Margaret Yorke, and Pauline Bell. She was inducted into the prestigious Detection Club in 1981, and is a recipient of the 2015 Cartier Diamond Dagger award.^[2]

Biography

Aird was born in Huddersfield, West Riding of Yorkshire in England. She attended the Waverley School and Greenhead High School, both in Huddersfield. As a young adult, she was bedridden due to a serious illness.^[3] Upon recovery, she worked as practice manager and dispenser for her father's medical practice in Sturry, near Canterbury, Kent.^[4]

Her first novel, The Religious Body, was published in 1966.^[2] Aird is best known for her successful Chronicles of Calleshire, a series of crime novels set in the fictional County of Calleshire, England, and featuring Detective Inspector C.D. Sloan of the Berebury CID, and his assistant, Detective Constable Crosby.^[2] She has also written and edited a series of village histories, and is an editor and contributing author on works regarding other writers and the art of writing.

Aird served as Chair of the Crime Writers' Association from 1990 through 1991. She has been awarded the CWA Golden Handcuffs award for lifetime achievement and the Diamond Dagger for an outstanding lifetime's contribution to the genre, in 2015.

In 1988, she was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to the Girl Guides Association.^[3][5] She has been awarded an honorary MA from the University of Kent. She has lived since the war in Sturry, a village in East Kent, where for many years she took an active interest in local affairs.^[4]