27/10/2016 Meet the Author

Since the first episode of Prime Suspect 25 years ago,

and even before that, Lynda La Plante has been telling

tales about crime and about how the police deal with it,

in a series of television shows and best selling books seen

In her latest novel, Hidden Killers, her most famous character,

Jane Tennison, is on familiar territory as a young policewoman.

It's a story of prostitution and murder, and above all

about the problems the investigators face.

Once again, terrible events take their toll on the police

officers who have to deal with them and try, against the odds,

We're back in this book, Hidden Killers, with

Jane Tennison at an early stage in her career,

than we saw her in the previous book.

Why did you decide to take us back - we knew her in Prime Suspect -

I was at a book signing and one of the audience,

when they had the Q and A, said, "What was Jane Tennison like,

And it was quite astonishing because I didn't know it.

Yeah, but it's not like a trigger to go, "Oh gosh, I really

want to know about where she came from," but it was the realisation

that although I'd worked very closely with a DCI

from Metropolitan Police, and she had been incredible

in the research for the original Prime Suspect, I didn't really

So I thought about it, and I read a very amusing note

from Raymond Chandler, who was asked about Philip Marlowe,

his famous detective, and he was asked, "Where did he come

from, where was he born," and he said, "I haven't got

So, in a way, exactly what you said - Jane Tennison was fully formed

by having a great DCI guiding me through the original

But in a way you were looking for something that would explain

the woman that we first came to know when she had, so to speak, grown up?

Exactly, because she was so cool and calm.

She was also able to sit in a chair and, as she was told,

"You are trying to get into dead man's shoes," and she said,

That was a big toughness, but again I was constantly aware

that she was being shaped by a real life DCI, and she was very unaware

And it wasn't until I went back, and it took nearly two

and a half years researching, because to go back to 1970s training

school, put Jane Tennison through probationary work, very...

You know, you need feedback from the real McCoy.

One of the interesting things about that of course is the dramatic

change, not just in police procedure in the intervening years,

but I think it is fair to say in the whole mentality of policing

Talking to some of the wonderful women who had been in the force

in the 70s, they said, "We were wallpaper,

You suddenly had to say, "Excuse me, I think..."

And, "We don't want your thinking, thank you."

They hated women coming into the force.

So it was the people that were able to maintain a toughness -

And that was the absolute beginning of the young Jane Tennison.

So what you're talking about in this, and it's always

difficult with plots - we don't want to go into too much

detail because it's a thriller - but what you're talking

about here is a woman who is learning and growing up

in actually rather a tough environment, in terms of, you know,

And to be used as a decoy for a prostitute.

I mean, this, she thought, was incredible, because it

was a move towards CID, and in Hidden Killers, again,

often I kick off work on a moment in the book when one

of the policewomen just happened to say to me, "God,

I remember being used as a decoy from a murder victim,

and I wore her coat," and she said, "I could smell her perfume."

And that triggers something in the young Jane Tennison,

being put into this rabbit fur coat that stinks of the very strong

You're almost more interested in the minds of the hunters

The way I work is that something in the newspaper

There was an article in a paper about the effect

of a beautiful older sister being found brutally murdered.

The description of how her father, looking for his gorgeous daughter,

comes across her naked body - raped, beaten.

The images that were left in that family never ever go away.

There is an important point here, of course, isn't there?

Because some people say our collective fascination,

encouraged by writers like yourself, with death and destruction,

with that kind of misery, with the endless business

of the police trying to find out what happened,

has a desensitising effect on us all, and therefore the horror

of the kind that you've just described is somehow less real

and more distant, and somehow on a screen and it doesn't matter.

No, because I do not believe my work goes down that route.

Because I've always focused on police procedure, to me,

crime writing is very complex, because as I'm not telegraphing

a kind of glorification of sex crimes and criminals,

How difficult it is, but at the same time that hunt

is what attracts readers to crime novels.

Your job as the author is to say, "Do you think you know

I will weave a plot for you that is very complex,"

but in my plots they are also based totally and utterly

unbelievable crimes, the process of the police.

And also, as I said before, the effect on a family who had lost

a beautiful daughter to murder, the effect of crime on police

officers, maintains a very deep degree of pain.

Do you yet know who Jane Tennison is, where she came

A lot more work, and it is so enjoyable because I have,

you know, been very fortunate to be commissioned for more books,

because I'm taking her actually up to the age we saw her

in Prime Suspect, so she is going to go through...

It's a slow business, but it is very exciting.

Lynda La Plante, thank you very much.