When it comes to police procedurals, Lynda LaPlante is the best. Jane Tennison is summoned to investigate the finding of a coffin at a former convent undergoing redevelopment. They find a coffin which holds a dead nun who was killed. Despite their efforts to investigate, the Catholic Church is uncooperative and claims that the convent's records were lost in a fire.
Lynda's novels, have well-written and well-plotted stories. The characters she creates are vibrant. We gain enough insight into their personal lives to make them intriguing, without crossing the boundary and disrupting the narrative. The human aspect of detectives is what captivates me when I'm learning about them.
I already have book #8 "Dark Rooms" ready to read.
Many thanks to @ZaffreBooks @LaPlanteLynda & @Tr4cyF3nt0n from Compulsive Readers for a spot on the tour.
About the Author
Lynda La Plante (born Lynda Titchmarsh) is a British author, screenwriter, and erstwhile actress (her performances in Rentaghost and other programmes were under her stage name of Lynda Marchal), best known for writing the Prime Suspect television crime series.
Her first TV series as a scriptwriter was the six-part robbery series Widows, in 1983, in which the widows of four armed robbers carry out a heist planned by their deceased husbands.
In 1991 ITV released Prime Suspect which has now run to seven series and stars Helen Mirren as DCI Jane Tennison. (In the United States Prime Suspect airs on PBS as part of the anthology program Mystery!) In 1993 La Plante won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for her work on the series. In 1992 she wrote at TV movie called Seekers, starring Brenda Fricker and Josette Simon, produced by Sarah Lawson.
She formed her own television production company, La Plante Productions, in 1994 and as La Plante Productions she wrote and produced the sequel to Widows, the equally gutsy She's Out (ITV, 1995). The name "La Plante" comes from her marriage to writer Richard La Plante, author of the book Mantis and Hog Fever. La Plante divorced Lynda in the early 1990s.
Her output continued with The Governor (ITV 1995-96), a series focusing on the female governor of a high security prison, and was followed by a string of ratings pulling miniseries: the psycho killer nightmare events of Trial & Retribution (ITV 1997-), the widows' revenge of the murders of their husbands & children Bella Mafia (1997) (starring Vanessa Redgrave), the undercover police unit operations of Supply and Demand (ITV 1998), videogame/internet murder mystery Killer Net (Channel 4 1998) and the female criminal profiler cases of Mind Games (ITV 2001).
Two additions to the Trial and Retribution miniseries were broadcast during 2006.
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