In her prime
Interview | Alistair Duncan Lynda La Plante transformed British television with her darkly realistic crime dramas and famously tough female characters, but just what makes her tick? THE BEST-SELLING British crime novelist, TV dramatist and producer Lynda La Plante has gone through a fair few grisly experiences in the name of research for her many [...]
Interview | Alistair Duncan
Lynda La Plante transformed British television with her darkly realistic crime
dramas and famously tough female characters, but just what makes her tick?
THE BEST-SELLING British crime novelist, TV dramatist and producer Lynda La Plante has gone through a fair few grisly
experiences in the name of research for her many stories. But what was the worst one? “The mortuary in Russia,” she says,grimly. “That was a horror.”
Brushing her cinnamon fringe to one side, she recounts the story about how, having ventured to a morgue in Moscow, a bloated corpse tumbled down from its position, causing her translator to faint and leaving La Plante to be escorted through the ghastly halfway house for the dead by a mortician speaking in Russian – and obviously no translations possible.
“It was an odd experience,” she recalls. “But actually, in the retelling of it, it does become quite amusing.”
Conversation with La Plante often involves seesawing from the sombre to the ridiculous. Famous for her hardbitten
brand of crime fiction, she’s utterly serious when talk turns to topics such as the criminal justice system or her views on the lack of realism in TV. At the same time, she’s wonderfully theatrical – well, she did train to be an actress at RADA. It’s plain to see the delight the thespianturned- writer takes in recounting anecdotes, such as the one about the ‘blagger’ (armed robber) who broke into a
Barclays bank by sawing a circle in the floor around himself from the level above, just like a Laurel and Hardy villain.
“They use the word ‘productive’ here like it’s an illness I’ve had. That is extraordinary in this country, that to be prolific is not something very special and very lucky. My heart goes out to writers who get a block. I haven’t had it yet.”
A famously meticulous researcher, La Plante, 61, prides herself on how closely her stories about murder investigations
mirror real police procedure. Why is she so adamant that her stories be so realistic? Why not, like many other writers, just
allow herself poetic licence in the service of a good yarn?
“Because I don’t take poetic licence,” she replies, re-using my phrase with disdain. “Poetic licence is not actually giving truthful facts. When I watch a crime show and they say: ‘the DNA results are just coming through’, I think: ‘that’s impossible.’ It would take at least 48 hours.”
She herself avoids those “crass mistakes” in crime fiction, by employing a proof-reading team of pathologists, forensics
experts and police officers. “They get the manuscript and they scrawl abusive things all over it. But I don’t mind,” she says. Why do they agree to help her? “Because they get sick and tired of their work being poetically licensed,” she retorts. “They like the fact that it’s right. And they like the fact that the police are shown to be real human beings.”
The writer splits her time between doing novels and drama scripts, which she then produces through her own production company which she set up in 1994. It’s given her a lot of control with, however, one notable exception. Prime Suspect, which starred Helen Mirren as hard-bitten DCI Jane Tennison (based on a female detective La Plante knew) was the vehicle that shot its writer to fame. But, having devised the original story for Granada Television, she stopped writing for it after the third series and was reported to be deeply unhappy with
the way Tennison’s character had been developed.
“I do feel that it’s rather sad that you build a great female character and they have to make her into a loser and an alcoholic,” she says. “I never saw the last series, so I don’t know exactly how they did it, but I would not have taken her character down that route. I would have taken her to the top of the police force, promoted her upwards, sky-high.”
And this is certainly the direction that La Plante took herself. She has produced at least six series for US networks, on top of the 30-odd she’s done for UK television. Her gleaming La Plante Productions nerve centre in London media hub Soho is deliberately a grand office (guarded by a giant, four-foot long, toy panther) to win over the Americans.
“I’ve just had my office completely re-done and repainted,” she says. “I think sometimes it’s good to show
the Americans that we’re doing incredibly well.”
Born in Liverpool as Lynda Titchmarsh, the daughter of a sales manager, she won a scholarship to RADA, then acted with the Royal Shakespeare Company and went on to appear in shows like The Sweeney and Minder. She discovered her true calling when she turned her hand to scriptwriting (her first series, Widows, was transmitted in 1984). She says she has no regrets about not continuing with the acting, not least because the one cameo she did was a complete disaster.
“They made me carry this tray of beer up and down in the background until I was so knackered, I couldn’t lift the tray,” she says. “I was soaked in beer and smelled of it for days!”
She married American musician Richard La Plante 30 years ago, though the couple divorced in the mid-1990s. The millionaire writer had always wanted to have children, but since the marriage had produced none, she signed up with an adoption agency and, after a long wait, became the proud mother of a son, Lorcan, in 2003. “He has priority time, I have days when nobody’s allowed to contact me,” she
says. “He is the joy of my life… He has lightened everything.”
As La Plante’s assistant pokes his head through the door, signifying that her next meeting is due, I ask her what still propels her to keep turning out gritty storylines at the phenomenal rate that she does. “It’s the thrill of writing,” she says, turning her petite frame towards me. “I can be wringing in sweat while I’m writing. I was watching some footage of the late, great Pavarotti the other day, watching
how the energy rises from his toes, up through his body, then erupts out of him. You cannot teach that to anybody. It’s like writing. That energy of life is such a gift.”
Her wildly animated impersonation of the legendary tenor erupting on stage like a human volcano over, La Plante leaves the room to attend a meeting – and the business of manufacturing true-to-life, gory fiction continues apace.
Clean Cut, the latest novel by Lynda La Plante
(£17.99, Simon & Schuster), is available now
