Lynda La Plante Books in Order

After three armed robbers are killed in a botched security-van heist, their widows are left with grief, debts and dangerous enemies. When Dolly Rawlins discovers her husband’s detailed plans for the job, she and the other women decide to finish it themselves—if they can trust each other and outsmart the men who want them dead.

Hugh Llewellyn, a hardened Welsh miner, dreams of a better future for his daughter Evelyne, who falls for Freedom, a charismatic prizefighter saved from the gallows. Their choices launch a sweeping family saga from pit villages to prize rings and Prohibition America, all shadowed by a mysterious, possibly cursed inheritance.

In this sequel to The Legacy, the family’s fabled talisman promises wealth to each new generation—if it is used selflessly. For Evelyne, Juliana and their children, the charm brings both prosperity and obsession as ambition, revenge and tangled loves threaten to destroy the very legacy it was meant to protect.

When all the men of the powerful Luciano clan are slaughtered on the eve of a family wedding, their widows and daughters-in-law are left to pick up the pieces. As they battle a ruthless rival boss and confront shocking betrayals, the women of Villa Rosa learn to wield power—and vengeance—for themselves.

A prostitute is found brutally murdered, and DNA evidence points neatly to George Marlow, a man once convicted of attempted rape. Given her first chance to run a major case, DCI Jane Tennison battles hostile colleagues, media pressure and a second killing that suggests the obvious suspect may be anything but.

When the body of a young Black woman is discovered in a London flat, Jane Tennison knows the murder could ignite already tense race relations. Under political scrutiny and accused of bias from all sides, she must find the faceless killer before the city—and her investigation—explodes.

After leaving the Parachute Regiment, Frank Dillon finds civilian life dull, underpaid and suffocating. When London gangster Barry Newman offers him money and excitement, Frank is tempted back into danger—until the line between soldier and criminal blurs and the violence he once served starts to own him.

As children, twin sisters suffer brutal experimentation in a Nazi death camp, forging an uncanny telepathic bond. Separated after the war, one becomes a Berlin street survivor and lion-tamer’s wife, the other a wealthy American model. When their lives intersect again, buried memories trigger obsession, danger and long-delayed revenge.

On holiday in Spain, Detective Lawrence Jackson recognises Eddie Myers, a legendary London bank robber who vanished years ago. Persuaded to turn informant, Myers is brought home under Jackson’s watch, but as the charismatic criminal spins his story, Jackson must decide who is manipulating whom—and at what cost.

When private investigator Mike Hazard disappears, his wife searches his office and makes a horrifying discovery—her husband had another wife. Thrown together and betrayed, the two women join forces to track him down, only to uncover criminal secrets that make them targets for both sides of the law.

On her first day leading the Vice Squad, Jane Tennison investigates the death of a teenage rent boy found burned in a drag performer’s flat. When the trail points toward an impeccably connected public figure, she is warned off—forcing Jane to choose between her career and exposing a predator.

Once a decorated Pasadena homicide lieutenant, Lorraine Page lost everything after a drunken shooting left a teenager dead. Living on the streets and drinking herself numb, she is dragged back into police work when a serial killer starts targeting prostitutes—and Lorraine realises she may be the only surviving witness.

A routine night-time call-out leaves a lifeboat crew and the people they pull from the sea facing choices that cannot be undone. As the rescue spirals into tragedy, long-suppressed tensions in a coastal community surface and everyone involved must live with the cost of what they did—or failed to do.

Years after the widows pulled off their audacious robbery, Dolly Rawlins is trying to live quietly abroad. When news from London suggests someone is cashing in on Harry Rawlins’s old plans, she returns to settle scores—only to find that betrayal inside her own circle may be the deadliest threat of all.

After serving time for the last job, Dolly Rawlins walks out of prison determined to go straight and enjoy the country property she has inherited. But old enemies, buried loot and the lure of one more score drag her back into a dangerous world where loyalty can be fatal.

When a prisoner dies during a riot at notorious Barfield high-security prison, young governor Helen Hewitt is sent in to restore order. Surrounded by corrupt staff, volatile inmates and political pressure, she must uncover the truth about the death while proving she can control a jail on the brink.

Now running a struggling private investigation agency in Los Angeles, recovering alcoholic Lorraine Page is offered a lifeline—a huge fee to find missing heiress Anna Louise Caley. Following a trail from Hollywood mansions to New Orleans backstreets, she uncovers a twisted mix of family lies, voodoo and greed.

When a young girl vanishes and is later found murdered, suspicion falls on her mother’s lover, a man with much to lose. As police build a case on fragile, circumstantial evidence, a rookie defence solicitor spots cracks in the story—and a jury must weigh truth against appearances.

Recovering from surgery and ready to relaunch her detective agency, Lorraine Page is hired by Hollywood sex symbol Cindy Nathan to prove she didn’t murder her porn-producer husband, found dead in his Beverly Hills pool. Digging into Harry Nathan’s murky past, Lorraine discovers a gallery of enemies—and becomes a target herself.

Three women are brutally attacked in near-identical fashion; two die, one survives and describes her assailant. When the police arrest wealthy businessman Damon Morton, his staff confess and his family swear he is innocent. In a courtroom where everyone lies, the line between victim and predator grows frighteningly thin.

Teenager Cassie Booth disappears on her paper round, her blood-stained clothes later found in a riverside boathouse. As DCS Mike Walker pursues the evasive boathouse owner, his colleague Pat North faces a persistent complainant whose behaviour soon turns sinister, forcing the team to confront obsession on two fronts.

During the demolition of a derelict guesthouse, builders uncover a woman’s skeleton buried beneath the patio—and soon more remains emerge, including a premature baby. Revisiting a seventeen-year-old mystery, Mike Walker must decide whether the former landlady is a serial killer or someone else has been hiding in plain sight.

Self-made tycoon Sir William Benedict has bought everything he ever wanted, including a Caribbean island—but not the acceptance of Britain’s elite. When a political scandal destroys his new social standing, William enlists charming Justin Chalmers and his reclusive sister Laura to help stage an elaborate, devastating revenge.

Edward de Jersey appears every inch the refined racehorse owner, but his fortune was built on audacious robberies he has long since sworn off. When an investment disaster wipes him out, he assembles a team of misfits to steal the crown jewels themselves—risking his family, freedom and carefully crafted new identity.

In this fifth Trial and Retribution case, Mike Walker and Pat North investigate a violent crime whose evidence refuses to stay neatly on one side of the courtroom. As witnesses change their stories and loyalties shift, they must untangle a web of lies before justice is quietly derailed.

A brutal crime with roots years in the past draws Mike Walker into a complex investigation that spans family secrets, police missteps and legal brinkmanship. With reputations on the line, the question becomes not only who committed the crime, but whether the system really wants the whole truth exposed.

Newly promoted detective Anna Travis joins a London murder squad hunting a serial killer who has slain a string of prostitutes. When a seventh victim breaks the pattern and evidence points to a charming television star, Anna must decide whether her instincts—or his charisma—are lying.

This crime anthology links sixteen dark tales through a single charm bracelet that brings misfortune to everyone who touches it. Lynda La Plante joins other mystery writers in contributing stories set across decades and cities, each exploring how greed, obsession and bad luck can turn deadly.

Anna Travis is called to a case where a young woman’s mutilated body has been left on a riverbank, drained of blood and carefully posed. As the press screams about a copycat Black Dahlia, Anna races to stop a killer obsessed with a notorious unsolved murder.

After DCI James Langton is savagely stabbed while chasing a pimp’s killer, Anna Travis puts her own life on hold to help his recovery. When her apparently random murder case connects to Langton’s ruthless criminal network, Anna becomes the next target of a gang who will kill to stay hidden.

When a former murder-squad detective is shot dead in a filthy drug squat, Anna Travis is dragged into a case tied to elusive trafficker Alexander Fitzpatrick. As bodies mount and a terrifying new drug surfaces, Anna must outwit a man who has stayed invisible for a decade.

Film star Amanda Delany seems to have everything until she is found brutally stabbed in her London home, her famous face left untouched. Digging into Amanda’s tangled life of addictions, affairs and betrayals, Anna Travis uncovers suspects who stand to lose far more than their reputations.

After a young woman’s body is dumped near a motorway service station, Anna Travis links the crime to two similar unsolved murders. A convicted killer insists he can help catch the murderer—but only if Anna hears him out, drawing her into a chilling battle of wills.

DCI Anna Travis reluctantly takes on a missing-person case when a court usher begs her to find his vanished son, Alan. With no body, a strangely unconcerned girlfriend and a flat hiding traces of blood, Anna must prove a murder has happened before she can hope to solve it.

A late-night attack on a woman in a notorious Hackney tower block looks straightforward when residents capture the suspect. But as Anna Travis links the assault to earlier, unsolved crimes, she must decide whether the man everyone wants to blame is really the predator—or a convenient scapegoat.

First-time prisoner Colin Burrows is desperate to be at the birth of his child, but the authorities refuse him leave. His cellmate Barry, oddly content with prison life, devises a wild scheme to get Colin out just long enough—an escape plan that could ruin both men or redeem them.

Struggling journalist Barbara talks her way into an interview with reclusive former soap star Margaret Reynolds, hoping for gossip and a comeback story. Instead she finds a frightened woman in a creaking country house where pianos play at night, footsteps run overhead and a hidden child may—or may not—exist.

Six months after nightclub owner Josh Reynolds’s death was written off as suicide, a jailed thug claims it was murder. Ordered to review the case alongside an abrasive FBI profiler, Anna Travis uncovers flaws in the original inquiry and must decide whether to expose colleagues’ mistakes or walk away.

Marcus and Lena Fulford seem to have it all until their teenage daughter Amy vanishes after a supposed sleepover. As DI Victor Reid probes the cracks in their collapsing marriage and business, he discovers lies on every side—and a missing girl who may be victim, runaway or something far darker.

Fresh from police training college in 1973, twenty-two-year-old Jane Tennison is posted to an East London station steeped in sexism and corruption. When a young woman is found murdered, Jane is pulled from paperwork into her first major case, testing how far she is willing to push against the rules.

In 1976, with an IRA bombing campaign terrorising London, Jane Tennison survives an explosion at Covent Garden tube and glimpses the bomber. Thrust into the spotlight as a key witness, she realises the terrorists may be closing in on Scotland Yard’s Good Friday dinner dance—and on her family.

Now a detective constable in Bow Street CID, Jane Tennison is disturbed by a series of sudden deaths dismissed as accidents or suicides. Digging beneath the tidy explanations, she uncovers hidden patterns in ordinary London homes and learns just how dangerous it is to be right too soon.

During the ‘Winter of Discontent’ in 1979, newly promoted Detective Sergeant Jane Tennison is posted to tough Peckham CID. As rubbish piles up on the streets, women’s bodies begin to appear along a short stretch dubbed ‘Murder Mile’, and Jane must stop a killer while the press attacks police failures.

Jane Tennison becomes the first woman posted to the Met’s elite Flying Squad, a macho unit nicknamed the ‘Dirty Dozen’. Supposedly there to calm the men down, she instead picks up intelligence on a multimillion-pound robbery—and has to prove she is not the weak link when the gang moves in.

Assigned to a West End station policing London’s show-business world, Jane Tennison catches a case when bin bags behind a talent agency are found full of dismembered remains. Navigating egos, money and exploitation, she must sift truth from performance to unmask a killer close to the spotlight.

Young DC Jack Warr is drifting through the Met until a fire at a derelict cottage reveals a charred corpse and the remains of millions in banknotes, tied to the long-ago Widows robbery. Chasing the truth about the money—and his own mysterious parentage—Jack strays dangerously close to the criminals he is hunting.

Assigned to tackle a violent gang raiding isolated country homes, Jack Warr is sent undercover to a quiet village that feels anything but safe. When he turns a terrified insider into his ‘Judas horse’ to lead the criminals out, the line between hunter and bait becomes perilously thin.

When builders uncover a buried coffin in a convent garden, Jane Tennison expects an old, solved tragedy. Instead she finds the body of a young nun with scratch marks inside the lid. Dismissed as historic, the case pits Jane against church secrecy and police indifference as she chases a long-hidden killer.

An eccentric elderly widow insists she is being stalked by a former lodger, and Jack Warr is the only detective who believes her. After she is found murdered and her property linked to a major drugs ring, Jack’s search for the vanished lodger drags him into a case where nothing is what it seems.

Seeking a quieter life at a suburban station, Jane Tennison finds only petty disputes—until a vicious domestic assault leaves a man close to death. As she interviews warring neighbours in an upmarket cul-de-sac, a missing teenager and a buried tragedy point to something far worse than a boundary feud.

A decomposed, starved girl is found in an old air-raid shelter on the grounds of the derelict Lanark mansion, followed by a second body hidden in the walls. Tracing the family’s history from London to Australia, Jane Tennison uncovers a secret so explosive it threatens a powerful dynasty—and her own safety.

A routine armed-robbery arrest should be straightforward, but mentor DCI Ridley warns Jack Warr that suspect Rodney Middleton is far more dangerous than he looks. When Ridley is abruptly suspended and then accused of murder, Jack must decide which man is truly ‘pure evil’—and how far he will go to prove it.

Three women suffer near-identical, savage assaults; two die, one survives and describes her attacker. When police focus on smooth businessman Damon Morton, his employees confess and his wife and mistress swear he is innocent. With every testimony contradicting the last, the prosecution must convince a jury that appearances can deceive.

Now a Detective Chief Inspector in the Met’s elite murder pool, Jane Tennison is handed a neglected cold case and an apparent suicide she believes was staged. As colleagues undermine and sideline her, she must solve both cases to claim the senior role her whole career has led toward.

Still haunted by his last case, Jack Warr is drawn to a shocking killing outside his patch: a man found nailed to a giant cross in an art framer’s workshop. His uneasy friendship with master forger Adam Border pulls him into the investigation—and leaves Jack wondering whether he is a detective or a witness.

In this candid memoir, Lynda La Plante looks back on a life that runs from Liverpool childhood and RADA training to acting, creating Widows and Prime Suspect, and founding her own production company. She shares battles with industry sexism, behind-the-scenes stories and how crime writing became her way of fighting back.