Lynda La Plante interview

In The Daily Telegraph, Judith Woods talks to Lynda Plante about her writing career.

Lynda La Plante is merrily listing the prisons, hostels, bordellos and mortuaries where she has carried out research for her gripping crime thrillers down the years.

There was her first time at a post mortem, when she fainted, bringing down a clattering trolley of equipment as she fell - no one had tipped her the wink that seasoned police officers suck strong mints to reduce the impact of the smell.

Then there was the trip to a Russian morgue, where bodies fished out of the Moscow River were slung down a metal shute from the street, then strung up, naked, from a line, like animal corpses in an abattoir, an identifying number crudely scrawled across each person's flesh.

Lynda La Plante's latest police series, Above Suspicion, will be shown on ITV later this year.