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Prime Suspect creator Lynda La Plante: I’ve written about scary criminals all my life but raising a teenage boy is far more terrifying

Lynda La Plante
Lynda La Plante

PRIME SUSPECT creator Lynda La Plante has won awards and critical acclaim around the world for her small-screen stories.

However, the writer says she would have given it all up for her son – despite the fact he keeps his famous mum a secret at school.

The bestselling author adopted Lorcan, now 14, as a baby when she was close to 60.

Lynda, 74, said: “My top priority is my son.

“Adopting was the best decision I ever made. I’d give up anything. If somebody said I’d lose everything to do it again then fine.

“He is the love of my life.”

Despite the wealth to stay anywhere in the world, including America where one of her TV series is being made into a major movie, Lynda insists Lorcan goes to school in the UK.

She said: “I’m so proud of him, although he doesn’t seem so proud of his mother.

“I don’t know if it’s being protective but he doesn’t ever say in any way that I’m his mother.

“He doesn’t feel the need to and doesn’t wish to be made special. Other mums at his school have no idea what I do. One asked if she’d read anything I’d written and I just said she might have.

“I always just make sure I’m at the rugby or the rowing for Lorcan. That’s what’s important to a child, not what you do or who you’re seen with.”

Like any mum Lynda admits she worries endlessly about Lorcan, trying to ensure he’s well and staying away from anything he shouldn’t be involved with.

She said: “I think it’s very difficult to bring up a teenager these days.

“You have to be on guard, watchful at all times.

“You wonder what he’s looking at on his phone. He’ll say, ‘Oh for goodness sake I’m watching motor racing’ and I’ll be saying, ‘I just want to check that!’

“We’re living in a very worrying state and children can be abused so very young in their lives.”

Lynda’s latest novel Good Friday is out this month.

It’s another in her series featuring the early policing days of Jane Tennison, so memorably played by Helen Mirren in the gripping Prime Suspect series.

Lynda started the new Tennison books – this is the third after Hidden Killers – after a fan at a book signing in Sheffield asked her how the character had got where she did.

But while she’s thrilled at the way the books have become massive sellers, she was a lot less happy at the way ITV brought the young copper, played by Stefanie Martini, to the screen recently in Prime Suspect 1973.

A bitter battle broke out between the broadcaster and Lynda who was so furious she wasn’t allowed to visit during filming or suggest changes.

“The success of Good Friday has helped me to move forward,” admits Lynda.

“I had to spend two years researching the 1970s and talking to officers who were around at the time. So I was hurt at what happened with the series.

“I wasn’t happy at all and I just couldn’t bring myself to watch it.

“I was barred from the set but, look, I’m over it thank God. After the humiliation and the walking away I think the best way forward is to be incredibly successful and put it behind me.

“But that took quite a while.”

Lynda La Plante (PA)
Lynda La Plante (PA)

Despite the disappointment, Prime Suspect 1973 hasn’t put Lynda off having her stories being seen on screen.

Her 1983 TV series Widows, about the spouses of dead armed robbers teaming up to finish the job, is currently being made into a big Hollywood movie by Steve McQueen, the Oscar-winning director of 12 Years A Slave.

And American TV network CBS are making a new series based on her book Cold Shoulder.

“Widows has just finished filming in Chicago with Liam Neeson, Colin Farrell and Viola Davis,” says Lynda. “It all came about because Steve McQueen came up to me at a function and said he’d wanted to do Widows all his life. He said he’d been hooked since he was a little boy – which made me feel so old.

“It’s very exciting and I can’t wait to see it. It never ceases to amaze me how things spark an interest and it just keeps on going.

“Kelly McGillis was wonderful in the original Cold Shoulder, now they’re going to want a much bigger star to make the new series.”

Publishers Bonnier Zaffre have commissioned a further five books from Lynda and despite being in her 70s her passion and enthusiasm are undimmed.

“I wouldn’t know what I’d do with myself if I couldn’t write,” she says. “I’d get a pain in the neck and be told I need therapy on it but I’ll still be there at the computer five hours later in the freezing cold.

“I lose all sense of time and have to be hauled off it.”

Despite the vast number of books sold, Hollywood films and big TV series, Lynda insists her life is far from glamorous and star-studded.

“You can’t be that glamorous when you have a 14-year-old boy who wants to go to rowing in the pouring rain,” she adds.

“People think I lead a very exotic life, but that’s not the case. I live a very ordinary life.

“I’m very private and rather quiet.”

Lynda says she had to turn down a massive charity bid because of TV’s Taggart.

She offered to raise funds by writing a character into her latest Jane Tennison novel.

But one lucrative offer had to be killed off.

“I’d given prizes in the past to be on set for filming but this time I offered to name a character instead,” said Lynda, who’s such a big fan of Taggart she’d like to see a Tennison-style young Taggart made by STV.

“The bidding was unbelievable and a banker said he wanted his name in, but there might be an issue as he was called Taggart.

“Knowing what a huge hit Taggart has been I said I did feel that might be a problem, so he didn’t go ahead and bid.

“In the end I had to offer three characters to keep people happy – which involved a lot of re-writing in the book – and it raised £50,000.”