Prime Suspect

Series · 4 books · 1991-2013

By Lynda La Plante

Books in series

Prime Suspect

1991

In the dark night of the soul ... If Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison hadn't been a woman, she might not have noticed the victim's shoes ... and that they didn't match the size given on the info sheet now so obviously misidentifying the dead blonde as a hooker named Della Mornay. Being so through, so good at the details, made Jane a top investigator; being a woman made the boys in the squadron want to see her fall on her face. But Jane Tennison was determined to catch the madman stalking women in London's street shadows. She had a prime suspect, and she needed to make the charges against him stick. She also needed to keep her own secret in check: she couldn't let anyone see that she was falling apart inside, as her obsession with cracking this case and breaking out from under the heel of the station house boy's club took over life, destroying her relationship with the man she loved, pushing her closer and closer to the dark urges of a killer ...

A Face in the Crowd

1992

The victim was young. Female. And black. Her skull had been smashed in, her face decomposed beyond all recognition. But for Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison, the corpse that had just been found in one of London's poorest communities was only the beginning of a case that would tear apart an already divided city . . .and embroil the gritty cop and her force in a hotbed of racial strife, shocking accusations, and sudden, wrenching violence. But Jane Tennison was not a woman who let anything get in the way of her passion for justice. Not the racism of some of the boys in the station house, or the slippery politicking of her superiors. Not even when her own stormy love life explodes in sleazy tabloid headlines. Because a brutal and seductive killer was still at large, luring innocent girls from London's midnight streets. And because for Jane Tennison, stalking her prime suspect has become an obsession—one that could send her spiraling over the edge . . .

Silent Victims

1993

The drag queen named Vera Reynolds swayed on-stage singing "Falling in Love Again." And a sixteen-year-old boy lay in Vera's fire-engulfed apartment . . . very, very dead. He was a "rent boy," a sex-for-hire street kid who catered to the tastes of special customers. It was the kind of murder Soho's Vice Squad saw often. But the influential do-gooder who was a prime suspect in this one made the young boy's death different—a ticking bomb able to blast open the nasty, secret lives of politicians, judges . . . and cops. Detective Jane Tennison had moved up the career ladder through sheer guts and an unstoppable passion for justice. Now, on her first day as the head of the Vice Squad, she caught a case threatening to wreck her career. She had been told whom to arrest—and whom to back off from-in the murder of the "rent boy." And she couldn't go with the program. She knew a destroyer of children was out there. She knew she had a to save her future or go after him like an avenging angel, and damn the consequences to hell ...

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The Prime Suspect Cases

2013

All three Prime Suspect cases, featuring DCI Jane Tennison, in one stunning volume PRIME SUSPECT When a prostitute is found murdered in her bedsit, the Metropolitan police set to work finding the perpetrator of this brutal attack. For Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison, this is the perfect opportunity to get herself noticed. But when every one of her colleagues is willing her to trip up, and the case is far from clear cut, will she be able to prove her mettle. PRIME SUSPECT 2: A FACE IN THE CROWD The coroner's report identifies the body as young, black, female, and impossibly anonymous. Yet one thing is clear to DCI Jane Tennison - that news of her murder will tear apart a city already cracking with racial tensions, hurling Scotland Yard and Tennison herself into a maelstrom of shocking accusations and sudden, wrenching violence. PRIME SUSPECT 3: SILENT VICTIMS As Vera Reynolds, drag queen and night club star, sways onstage singing, a sixteen-year-old rent boy lies in the older man's apartment, engulfed in flames. For DCI Jane Tennison, now head of the Vice Squad, this high-profile case threatens to destroy the career she fought so hard for.

Author

Lynda La Plante

Author · 64 books

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.