Catherine Aird

Kinn Hamilton McIntosh (20 June 1930 – 21 December 2024), known professionally as Catherine Aird, was an English novelist. She was 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", "traditional" 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. Upon recovery, she gave up her plans to study medicine at Edinburgh University, instead working as practice manager and dispenser for her father's medical practice in Sturry, near Canterbury, Kent, giving her a familiarity with drugs and poison she put to use in her crime fiction.

Her first novel, The Religious Body, was published in 1966.

In the 1988 Birthday Honours, she was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for services to the Girl Guides Association, for which she served as chairman of the Guides’ U.K. Finance Committee, and then assistant treasurer of the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts. She was awarded an honorary MA from the University of Kent in 1985.