Lynda La Plante interview

In The Independent, Danuta Kean meets Lynda La Plante, whose new novel, Clean Cut, has just been published.

Lynda La Plante is raging. She is furious, her temper as fiery as her flame red hair. "How many Romanians are in? How many Polish are in?" she splutters in the midst of a diatribe about the NHS, over-crowded prisons and illegal immigration. "They are congregating like cockroaches into our major city centres, which are unable to deal with the crime that they bring."

She doesn't see me flinch. My name is Polish but I am too shocked to say anything: the woman who showed us that there is more to female cops than Cagney & Lacey has turned into Alf Garnet. Her pint-sized body – small even in precarious high heels – shakes with all the indignation of a Daily Mail editorial.