PRIME WRITER
Chances are that even if you don’t watch TV crime dramas (and let’s face it, most of us do), Prime Suspect will be on your radar. Created by bestselling writer Lynda La Plante, Prime Suspect originally ran for seven series between 1991 and 2006 and is currently streaming on Amazon. Its central character DCI Jane Tennison is a figure whose success comes through proving that she can be tougher and more uncompromising than her colleagues in the maledominated world of policing.
At 78, author and screenwriter Lynda is a prolific writer whose newest crime thriller, Unholy Murder, is her 45th novel, and the seventh in her Tennison series. Each book charts an episode in the police career of Jane, taking her from her early days as a new policewoman fresh out of training school through to the seasoned operator iconically played by Helen Mirren in the TV series.
The character of Jane Tennison is based on a real-life former police officer turned script consultant, Jackie Malton. ‘What I find fascinating is when I wrote Prime Suspect I worked alongside the DCI in her forties,’ says Lynda. ‘To be a DCI you need a lot of experience and she was a tough woman. She’d pick up a script and go, she wouldn’t do that, cut to the chase. Go for it, go for it.’
