Rich life of highs and lows for the Queen of Crime

CURRENTLY working on a new novel, Prime Suspect creator Lynda La Plante is still a force of nature at the age of 81. But as she publishes her memoir she tells JANE ODDY about the challenges she has been forced to overcome to succeed.

THROUGHOUT the many twists and turns of her life Lynda La Plante has followed a simple mantra - "you get knocked down, you get back up".

Now in her fascinating and funny memoir Getting Away With Murder: My Unexpected Life on Page, Stage and Screen, she tells her unfiltered life story - and it is every bit as surprising as any of her books.

She has faced career highs and lows, bankruptcy, fertility battles, a kidnap plot for her adopted son and relationship heartbreak.

But she has always bounced back and maintained her joie de vivre. She says: "I've had a terrific life and I continue to live a terrific life. Eight decades and counting."

In the name of research for her best-selling crime novels, the acclaimed writer of TV's Prime Suspect, Widows and the Governor, has mingled with the Mafia in Sicily, shadowed a private detective in the mean streets of Los Angeles, and come face-to-face with famous serial killers, including Dennis Nilsen and The Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe.

She says: "It was hard to comprehend the evil and madness in Peter Sutcliffe.

"He had such little shoulders. He had to kill from behind because he was too afraid to face the women he was torturing."

Britain's most notorious prisoner, the killer Charles Bronson, still writes to her.

She says: "He sends his cartoons. He's asked me to be his bridesmaid twice. I've said no."

Lynda, still glamorous at 81, lives and breathes her work with an irrepressible energy.

In the past, she has had health scares with surgery for a heart murmur and uterine cancer, yet she is at her desk at 7am every day after a swim, and still writes two books a year.