Whole Life Sentence

Lynda La Plante’s final Tennison crime novel, bringing readers up to the point at which the famous television series Prime Suspect began.

Newly promoted Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison has elbowed her way into the Area Major Incident Pool, or AMIP, an elite team investigating non-domestic murders.

With her new position, she hopes things will change: the rampant sexism, the snide remarks, the undermining. Then she gets her first assignment: a five-year-old cold case of a missing teenager no one else has any interest in investigating, and an assumed suicide Tennison suspects is, in fact, murder.

But as Tennison gathers the crucial evidence to secure arrests, her new colleagues watch like vultures circling prey. And one by one the cases that she has built from the ground up are taken from her - and the glory along with them.

Tennison has seen it all before - but this time feels different. Get the job done here and she will rise to a level never before reached by a woman. It’s hers for the taking. She just has to do what she’s been doing brilliantly for years: find her prime suspect . . .

Lynda La Plante was born in Liverpool. She is the author of nearly forty novels, all of which have been bestsellers. She trained for the stage at RADA and worked with the National theatre and RDC before becoming a television actress. She then turned to writing--and made her breakthrough with the phenomenally successful TV series Widows.

Lynda’s original script for the much-acclaimed Prime Suspect won awards from BAFTA, Emmys, British Broadcasting and Royal Television Society as well as the 1993 Edgar Allan Poe Award.

Lynda is an honorary fellow of the British Film Institute and was awarded the BAFTA Dennis Potter Best Writer’s Award in 2000. In 2008, she was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to Literature, Drama and Charity.

Lynda La Plante is the first lay person to be awarded an honorary fellowship to the Forensic Science Society. In 2020 she launched the acclaimed Listening to the Dead podcast with former CSI Cass Sutherland, exploring forensic science and its impact on solving crimes.