Lynda La Plante

Lynda La Plante acted before she wrote. Born Lynda Titchmarsh in Newton-le-Willows in 1943, she trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and spent years taking television and stage parts, including work with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Widows, her 1983 serial about four women who carry out the armed robbery their husbands died attempting, made her a screenwriter instead. Prime Suspect followed in 1991 and handed Helen Mirren the part of DCI Jane Tennison. Decades on, La Plante went back to that character's beginning. The Tennison novels open with her as a probationer, and Hidden Killers, the second of them, finds her newly made a detective constable at Bow Street CID in 1970s London, deciding whether to push an investigation her superiors would rather she dropped. She started her own production company in 1993, was appointed CBE in 2008, and was given the Diamond Dagger in 2024.