:00:00. > :00:00.Since the first episode of Prime Suspect 25 years ago,
:00:07. > :00:09.and even before that, Lynda La Plante has been telling
:00:10. > :00:12.tales about crime and about how the police deal with it,
:00:13. > :00:14.in a series of television shows and best selling books seen
:00:15. > :00:19.In her latest novel, Hidden Killers, her most famous character,
:00:20. > :00:24.Jane Tennison, is on familiar territory as a young policewoman.
:00:25. > :00:27.It's a story of prostitution and murder, and above all
:00:28. > :00:30.about the problems the investigators face.
:00:31. > :00:32.Once again, terrible events take their toll on the police
:00:33. > :00:35.officers who have to deal with them and try, against the odds,
:00:36. > :00:58.We're back in this book, Hidden Killers, with
:00:59. > :01:00.Jane Tennison at an early stage in her career,
:01:01. > :01:04.than we saw her in the previous book.
:01:05. > :01:08.Why did you decide to take us back - we knew her in Prime Suspect -
:01:09. > :01:20.I was at a book signing and one of the audience,
:01:21. > :01:25.when they had the Q and A, said, "What was Jane Tennison like,
:01:26. > :01:34.And it was quite astonishing because I didn't know it.
:01:35. > :01:42.Yeah, but it's not like a trigger to go, "Oh gosh, I really
:01:43. > :01:46.want to know about where she came from," but it was the realisation
:01:47. > :01:49.that although I'd worked very closely with a DCI
:01:50. > :01:54.from Metropolitan Police, and she had been incredible
:01:55. > :01:59.in the research for the original Prime Suspect, I didn't really
:02:00. > :02:08.So I thought about it, and I read a very amusing note
:02:09. > :02:13.from Raymond Chandler, who was asked about Philip Marlowe,
:02:14. > :02:17.his famous detective, and he was asked, "Where did he come
:02:18. > :02:19.from, where was he born," and he said, "I haven't got
:02:20. > :02:27.So, in a way, exactly what you said - Jane Tennison was fully formed
:02:28. > :02:32.by having a great DCI guiding me through the original
:02:33. > :02:37.But in a way you were looking for something that would explain
:02:38. > :02:43.the woman that we first came to know when she had, so to speak, grown up?
:02:44. > :02:48.Exactly, because she was so cool and calm.
:02:49. > :02:55.She was also able to sit in a chair and, as she was told,
:02:56. > :02:59."You are trying to get into dead man's shoes," and she said,
:03:00. > :03:07.That was a big toughness, but again I was constantly aware
:03:08. > :03:15.that she was being shaped by a real life DCI, and she was very unaware
:03:16. > :03:26.And it wasn't until I went back, and it took nearly two
:03:27. > :03:30.and a half years researching, because to go back to 1970s training
:03:31. > :03:37.school, put Jane Tennison through probationary work, very...
:03:38. > :03:41.You know, you need feedback from the real McCoy.
:03:42. > :03:47.One of the interesting things about that of course is the dramatic
:03:48. > :03:50.change, not just in police procedure in the intervening years,
:03:51. > :03:54.but I think it is fair to say in the whole mentality of policing
:03:55. > :04:00.Talking to some of the wonderful women who had been in the force
:04:01. > :04:04.in the 70s, they said, "We were wallpaper,
:04:05. > :04:10.You suddenly had to say, "Excuse me, I think..."
:04:11. > :04:12.And, "We don't want your thinking, thank you."
:04:13. > :04:15.They hated women coming into the force.
:04:16. > :04:19.So it was the people that were able to maintain a toughness -
:04:20. > :04:30.And that was the absolute beginning of the young Jane Tennison.
:04:31. > :04:36.So what you're talking about in this, and it's always
:04:37. > :04:39.difficult with plots - we don't want to go into too much
:04:40. > :04:42.detail because it's a thriller - but what you're talking
:04:43. > :04:44.about here is a woman who is learning and growing up
:04:45. > :04:47.in actually rather a tough environment, in terms of, you know,
:04:48. > :04:52.And to be used as a decoy for a prostitute.
:04:53. > :04:57.I mean, this, she thought, was incredible, because it
:04:58. > :05:01.was a move towards CID, and in Hidden Killers, again,
:05:02. > :05:09.often I kick off work on a moment in the book when one
:05:10. > :05:13.of the policewomen just happened to say to me, "God,
:05:14. > :05:19.I remember being used as a decoy from a murder victim,
:05:20. > :05:25.and I wore her coat," and she said, "I could smell her perfume."
:05:26. > :05:33.And that triggers something in the young Jane Tennison,
:05:34. > :05:39.being put into this rabbit fur coat that stinks of the very strong
:05:40. > :05:46.You're almost more interested in the minds of the hunters
:05:47. > :05:55.The way I work is that something in the newspaper
:05:56. > :06:03.There was an article in a paper about the effect
:06:04. > :06:11.of a beautiful older sister being found brutally murdered.
:06:12. > :06:18.The description of how her father, looking for his gorgeous daughter,
:06:19. > :06:23.comes across her naked body - raped, beaten.
:06:24. > :06:34.The images that were left in that family never ever go away.
:06:35. > :06:36.There is an important point here, of course, isn't there?
:06:37. > :06:39.Because some people say our collective fascination,
:06:40. > :06:45.encouraged by writers like yourself, with death and destruction,
:06:46. > :06:48.with that kind of misery, with the endless business
:06:49. > :06:50.of the police trying to find out what happened,
:06:51. > :06:55.has a desensitising effect on us all, and therefore the horror
:06:56. > :06:58.of the kind that you've just described is somehow less real
:06:59. > :07:02.and more distant, and somehow on a screen and it doesn't matter.
:07:03. > :07:08.No, because I do not believe my work goes down that route.
:07:09. > :07:13.Because I've always focused on police procedure, to me,
:07:14. > :07:18.crime writing is very complex, because as I'm not telegraphing
:07:19. > :07:27.a kind of glorification of sex crimes and criminals,
:07:28. > :07:35.How difficult it is, but at the same time that hunt
:07:36. > :07:40.is what attracts readers to crime novels.
:07:41. > :07:46.Your job as the author is to say, "Do you think you know
:07:47. > :07:54.I will weave a plot for you that is very complex,"
:07:55. > :07:57.but in my plots they are also based totally and utterly
:07:58. > :08:03.unbelievable crimes, the process of the police.
:08:04. > :08:09.And also, as I said before, the effect on a family who had lost
:08:10. > :08:12.a beautiful daughter to murder, the effect of crime on police
:08:13. > :08:21.officers, maintains a very deep degree of pain.
:08:22. > :08:24.Do you yet know who Jane Tennison is, where she came
:08:25. > :08:32.A lot more work, and it is so enjoyable because I have,
:08:33. > :08:38.you know, been very fortunate to be commissioned for more books,
:08:39. > :08:42.because I'm taking her actually up to the age we saw her
:08:43. > :08:45.in Prime Suspect, so she is going to go through...
:08:46. > :08:49.It's a slow business, but it is very exciting.
:08:50. > :08:53.Lynda La Plante, thank you very much.