TV's most famous detective returns

Lynda La Plante's new novel brings to life the 22-year-old police officer who would become Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison, played by Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect.

The creator of popular detective series Prime Suspect has created the back story of tough investigator Jane Tennison, writes Stephen Jewell.

"Where did she come from?" Though she was brought to life so memorably in the ITV series Prime Suspect, Lynda La Plante hadn't really thought about the origins of her character, Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison, until a reader inquired about it at a literary event. Now, after studying the often difficult experiences of female officers in the male-dominated ranks of London's Metropolitan Police in the early 1970s, La Plante is charting the then-fresh-faced probationer's formative years at Hackney Police Station in a new prequel novel, Tennison.

"While I'd previously incorporated her parents and her sister in the story, I didn't know all that much about her background, which I still find really extraordinary," she says. "But I'm not the only writer to ever be in this situation. Raymond Chandler was once asked what was the background of his famous detective, Philip Marlowe, and he replied, 'I haven't got the slightest idea'."

With both Helen Mirren and La Plante's police adviser Jackie Malton in their 40s when Prime Suspect first aired in 1991, Tennison's life before that point is essentially uncharted territory. "I had some absolutely wonderful people to guide me through exactly how it was at that time," says La Plante, who also referred to Callum Sutherland, the head of research at her company La Plante Global, an ex-murder squad detective who met his wife at Hackney Police Station in the early 1970s.

"It began to gather moss like a big stone," she adds. "I thought, 'I wonder if anyone would be interested in knowing how Tennison became that high-ranking police officer, and what she had to deal with to get there?' It all fell into place when I was told there were only two women at Hackney during that time, and it would have been tough for female officers back then, as discrimination was rife."

Tennison is set primarily in Hackney in 1973, when it was far from the gentrified middle-class suburb it is now. Patrolling the streets of East London would have represented a proverbial baptism of fire for young Tennison.

"There were these massive, sprawling estates with thousands of families in them, that were so overrun they were like [rabbit] warrens," says La Plante. "Sometimes the criminals would have two apartments next to each other, which had these holes going between them. So when the police knocked on one door, they could go through to the other one and get out. Hackney was also home to a lot of heavy criminals like the Krays and the Richardsons. It was almost a dropping ground there, with the importation of drugs. It was a very tough area."

But London was also a vibrant, exciting place to live in during the early 70s, which La Plante reflects in the frequent use of songs like the Moody Blues' Nights in White Satin. "As soon as you hear a particular piece of music, you're taken back to that time, or at least I am, as I'm not sure that anybody else is," laughs La Plante, who turned 72 this year. "All the music I've built into the book is very relevant to the era. I've mainly concentrated on English rock musicians, although I've very strongly used Janis Joplin, as well."

Though Prime Suspect and its sequels were initially made for television before La Plante penned a trio of three tie-in novels, Tennison is debuting in book form, with ITV planning to adapt it for the small screen next year, marking the original show's 25th anniversary. "I didn't even consider doing the TV series first," says La Plante, who is seeking an unknown actress for the role of 22-year-old Tennison.

"The casting process will be worldwide and it's going to be a very hard slog to find the right person. They have to have similar qualities to what Helen has, and while they might have one attribute, they might not have another. We also have to consider the way they look, as Tennison is absolutely gorgeous. Helen is now a formidable actress with all the accolades she's deservedly been given, but if you go back in time and look at her when she was a young actress at the Royal Shakespeare Company, she really was rather glamorous."

The novel opens with Tennison investigating the grisly death of a teenage prostitute.
"There are actually two crimes in the book, a murder inquiry and a much bigger crime, which you don't realise at first is coming up underneath it," says La Plante, who is always wary about the violence incessantly inflicted upon women in crime fiction. "For me, my priority has always been the victim, as I don't believe victims have been given a strong enough voice in the past. I don't dwell on it but you see the reaction of a young Jane Tennison, who goes to see the parents of the dead girl."

Although the novel is never narrated in the first person, La Plante always tells the story from Tennison's point of view.

"We see her intellect grow, and that's what I loved doing - shaping someone for the future and showing how her behaviour is influenced by the discrimination that went on around her. I wanted to show how this young girl becomes the Jane Tennison of Prime Suspect, who is a calm and absolutely ruthless policewoman."

Tennison (Simon & Schuster $45) is out now.