The Scene of the Crime
Lynda La Plante, Pan Macmillan
La Plante, who created and wrote the hit police TV series Prime Suspect which shot Helen Mirren to fame, says via our Zoom interview that many of the files on the shelves behind her are rejections — but most of them contain research, because she likes to investigate details for her next novel while writing her current one.
A striking former actor, this award-winning crime and mystery fiction writer appears indefatigable at 83. “I get up very early and start working, usually around seven, after a walk,” says La Plante. She writes in the morning and does background research in the afternoon. “Researching makes me go out … people say you can get everything on the internet, but you don’t get anecdotes or what you learn face to face.”
Jessica Russell, the protagonist of The Scene of the Crime, was inspired by a young crime scene officer La Plante met. In this new series, Russell is a behavioural specialist who trained in criminology and psychology, and is in charge of an experimental crime scene investigation unit for the Metropolitan Police in London.
Russell’s attention to detail — a trait she shares with La Plante — proves key to unlocking a vicious crime involving a near-fatal assault on a man with South African roots, whose wife is a ruthless barrister well known to the police.
When La Plante visited SA, she bonded with a stern publisher over the polishing of shoes after she observed the shine on his. The writer shares other traits with Russell, such as a somewhat obsessive-compulsive streak that extends beyond shoes.
Russell lives with her brother — they were rejected by their father as children — who has recovered from an addiction triggered by the death of their devoted mother. Loss and trust are among the themes she grapples with in The Scene of the Crime.
She is supported by a strong, likeable forensic team, Taff and Diane. La Plante emphasises the importance of emotional control in their work, based on her own experiences and interviews with experts in fields such as DNA testing and blood spatter.
Russell is adept at hiding her feelings, as she proves when she interrogates a man who is vicious and has a repellent history with her. La Plante says: “You listen to her talking very quietly, drawing him out, and you can feel him moving over towards her, to believe her, to trust her. And at the end of the meeting, he wants to reach out to say ‘thank you’. Then you get the real Jessica, who says, ‘Don’t dare touch me’.”
La Plante says the crime scene officer who “became Jessica” had worked her way to the top, and was a powerhouse (like the author). “She was strident, very impatient and had a temper. But when she started to laugh, she threw her head back and I heard this belly laugh.”
Much as real life influences La Plante, she influences life beyond fiction. “I was recently signing copies of The Scene of the Crime. I can’t tell you how many young women came up to me and said, ‘thank you. I’ve become a forensic scientist’."
Paratroopers have sent her “sackloads of letters from them and their families to say thank you” for the 1992 TV crime drama Civvies she created and wrote.
Writing her memoir Getting Away with Murder: My Unexpected Life on Stage, Page and Screen (2024) was however very difficult, says La Plante who also read the audiobook. “When I was reading in a booth, they would stop me saying, ‘Lynda stop, you’re laughing’ — or ‘Stop, take a breath, you’re getting angry’. Another time they said, ‘Oh Lynda, we’re going to have to stop because you’re crying’.”
La Plante has a big heart, not only for the people she loves or has loved, like her ex-husband, but also for her dogs. When she lost her Irish wolfhound Hugo when very young, it broke her heart. “Of course, at my age, I’ve known loss, I’ve known grief … but grief is a strange thing. Hugo was this special creature.”
Now she has an elephant-sized dog called Theo, who is a cross Wolfhound-St Bernard. “Now people don’t stop me and say, ‘My God, what a beautiful dog … they say, ‘My God, what is that?’”
This bestselling writer doesn’t live life in half measures. Like the Tartan Noir luminary Val McDermid (latest protagonist DCI Karen Pirie, of the historic cases unit) and the American writer Sara Paretsky (the V.I. Warshawski detective series in Chicago), La Plante is adept at creating compelling female leads who defy stereotypes.
They have earned their place in the pantheon of crime novels alongside their dedicated male peers like the rule-breaking LA detective Harry Bosch (by Michael Connelly) and Harry Hole, the brilliant Norwegian alcoholic detective (by Jo Nesbø).
La Plante’s Russell fans can look forward to the next book in 2027.
