Lynda La Plante: ‘I took on the mafia and lived to tell the tale, all thanks to Scouse traits’

The Prime Suspect creator spoke to the ECHO in an exclusive interview at the Liverpool Playhouse as she released her memoir, Getting Away With Murder

Lynda La Plante has managed to cram a thousand lives into one. The acclaimed author has shared the stage with Anthony Hopkins, gone toe-to-toe with some of Britain’s most notorious criminals and even had a run-in with the Mafia in her remarkable 81 years.

Lynda, who has enjoyed success as an actor, screenwriter, producer and author, has finally given in to overwhelming demand to share her incredible life story in a new memoir, Getting Away With Murder, out this week. The Prime Suspect creator is known for her award-winning crime fiction, but admitted that turning the lens in on herself has come with its own challenges.

She told ECHO in an exclusive interview: “You experience emotional impact that you don’t fully understand. You remember things that you maybe didn’t want to remember. Emotionally, sometimes you remember good things that you would like to share. Other (things) that you didn’t share that weren’t so nice.”

Lynda pulls no punches when telling her own story, saying the hardest part to relive was the breakdown of her marriage. The author was married to Richard La Plante from 1979 to 1996 before discovering he was having an affair with her PA.

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The author admitted that it wasn’t easy to relive that moment to write the memoir, adding: “When you break down that situation in your life, it’s emotionally difficult to just ignore it and say I didn’t feel anything. Yes, I did feel something.

“You can’t leave out the moments where I was really hurt, because that’s cheating in a way.” Lynda laughed, and she might not go into as much detail about the more positive moments, but she joked, “They’re just a little bit short.”

The 81-year-old had always resisted the idea of ​​writing a memoir, believing the advice of one of her heroes to write crime stories. She told the ECHO: “It was quite strange because Raymond Chandler was asked if he would ever write his memoirs and he said ‘who would want to know when I had a tricycle as a child? I’m never going to do that’.”

However, the author reconsidered when she realised she could tell her life story in a way she wanted, rather than sticking to the traditional structure of an autobiography. Lynda’s story takes readers around the world, but her beginnings are firmly rooted in Merseyside, having grown up in Crosby.

The author’s family life was struck by tragedy when her sister died in a car crash before Lynda was born. Although the harrowing incident had a traumatic impact on her parents, Lynda, whose maiden name was Titchmarsh, was inspired by the way her family resisted the tragedy, as she has mainly positive memories of her early years.

In the book she said: “Today I have a plaque hanging downstairs in my house. It says: A good laugh is sunshine in a house. It’s the motto I’ve lived by all my life and it was my parents’ dictum too. Even now, when my sister Gill and I meet, we spend most of our time in hysterics. The smallest thing can set us off. Back in the day, our life in Moor Lane was filled with roaring laughter too.”

Lynda knows the importance of laughter and said that Liverpool humour was instilled in her, as she attributed it to the way she has always been able to maintain a balanced approach to writing about gruesome subjects. She told the ECHO: “(Liverpool has) shaped me completely. You can’t be from Liverpool without that humour. It’s in everything. Because I think when you’re writing about a really dark subject you have to lift things up so it’s not just dark, dark, dark.”

Lynda has been breaking down social barriers all her life when she was inspired to try her hand at writing with her hit series, Widows, after becoming frustrated with the lack of interesting female characters in television dramas. Lynda inherited her fearless approach from her grandmother, Gertie, the tough matriarch she was close to growing up.

She said: “She would just hold up an umbrella and cross a major thoroughfare and just expect everything to stop. She was a fighter.” Lynda’s passion for the arts came from a more unexpected source, as she said it was her uncle, Stanley Hugill, renowned as a folk musician, who first sparked her creative pursuits with his stories of travelling the world.

She said: “He had been at sea since he was 12 and he was outrageous and wonderful. My mother was always terrified when I would go on my bike to visit Uncle Stanley when he was home.”

Lynda carried the spirit of Gertie and Stanley with her throughout her life as she studied at RADA before returning to Merseyside to enjoy an incredible career at the Playhouse as part of Liverpool Repertory. The ECHO interviewed Lynda at the famous Williamson Square theatre which holds such a special place in her heart.

Reflecting on her time at the Liverpool Playhouse, where she shared the stage with stars including Anthony Hopkins and Steven Berkoff, she said: “I had such a great time here. To be among the best actors in England. We had a great competitive relationship with the emerging Everyman. (Liverpool) was bombed to pieces (in WWII) and out of it rose this fantastic city. You can feel the energy, it’s everywhere, and that’s the great thing about it. It’s better than London.”

That combination of Liverpudlian humour and fearlessness that served Lynda well during her acting career proved particularly valuable when she made the transition to writing. While researching what would become the 1990 novel Bella Mafia, Lynda was determined to gain an authentic insight into the Mafia and she tirelessly pursued connections with the criminal underworld until she gained access to the Cosa Nostra in Palermo.

At a time when nearly 500 members of the Mafia were facing criminal charges in high-profile trials, Lynda managed to lure the mobster into submission with a brazen lie claiming she was working on a James Bond film and was in close contact with dangerous criminals. However, Lynda said it was always vital to be able to remove herself from the situation and see the funny side when she found herself in a potentially dangerous confrontation.

She recalled a meeting with a mafia insider who eventually inspired the character of Paul Barolla in the book. She told the ECHO: “The acting was really useful when you’re interviewing a horrific killer who you don’t really want to pay attention to, but when you’re writing a character you have to create a likeness of what makes them special.

“That’s where acting comes in handy, because you can’t show that you’re rejected. In the book I loosely touch on the fact that I’m in Palermo with the mafia. The gut is always the humor and that’s the Liverpool in me.

“I have this mafioso who accompanies me. He says listen to me, there is one problem. They must never know that it is me who accompanies you. Because I give you information. Don’t involve me. Do you understand?”

Lynda was in stitches when she revealed that the Mafia insider had later changed his mind and wanted some recognition for his role in the book. She said: “I said to him, ‘You get this manuscript. You read it and if there’s anything that worries you and you could get shot, you tell me and I’ll take it out’. It must have taken about a year to write it. So I give him the manuscript and he goes away, he comes back two days later. I’ve got a problem. No one’s going to know it’s me.”

The curiosity that drove Lynda to infiltrate the mafia and come face to face with notorious serial killers like Peter Sutcliffe and Dennis Nilsen shows no signs of wavering. The author remains as inspired by her work as ever, as she continues to write every day and produces an average of two novels a year.

Lynda, who adopted her son Lorcan when she was 59, has no plans to ever retire. She credits the fighting spirit of her family growing up in Crosby for keeping her going as she looks forward to the next chapter in her fascinating life.

She said, “I think I’m very lucky because I have a happiness gene. There’s something in me that you knock me down and I get back up. And I keep getting back up. I think that fighting instinct is in me.” Getting Away with Murder by Lynda La Plante is out now.