Lynda La Plante: ‘I felt vulnerable and fragile for so long’

Lynda La Plante’s adept at dealing with fear and drama, exploring themes of murder and intrigue in her bestselling crime books. Privately however, she’s currently navigating a totally unfamiliar landscape – her son’s teenage years.

“Worry and fear’s a constant really, isn’t it, when you get to the dreaded teenage years,” she says, talking on the phone from her Surrey home.

Lorcan, La Plante’s 17-year-old son, is clearly the light of her life. The Liverpudlian, now 77, adopted him as a baby when she was 59.

“I suffered years of infertility and had so many drugs to try to give me a baby, they provoked an early menopause when I was only 32,” recalls the writer, who parted from her American musician husband, Richard, in 1996.

Adoption is a theme in La Plante’s latest book, Buried – the first in a series, which, 25 years on from Widows [made into an Eighties TV series and a film in 2018], finally reveals what happens to Dolly Rawlins and her gang.

Her other new book, Blunt Force, is the latest in a series focusing on the early life of Jane Tennison. That her prolific output has continued unabated – she’s had 38 international bestsellers in a stellar career spanning more than 40 years – is remarkable considering the recent hurdles she’s faced.

Three years ago, she began suffering crippling neck pain, and then lost her sight two years ago following an eye operation, which at first left her blind. She’s since regained partial vision.

“Losing my sight was terrifying, and I feared at one point it would never return. What’s so hard to take is that it really wasn’t necessary,” La Plante adds. “I had only mild cataracts but really was just fed up with losing reading glasses and having to carry them around.”

After some unsuccessful surgeries, her neck problem was finally resolved not too long ago.

“I felt vulnerable and fragile for so long, and in such pain all the time with my eyes and neck. But I just had to get on with it because I’m the breadwinner.

“I can be quite tough.” And with characteristic humour, she jokes: “For instance, anyone trying to take my HRT patches off me had better watch out!”