Getting away with Murder with Lynda La Plante CBE.

Monday 3^rd September saw a good number of guests join Lynda La Plante CBE at a star studded launch of her memoir Getting Away With Murder at the Balcony Bar at the (British Film Institute) BFI. Crime Fiction attendees including Maxim Jakubowski, Barry Forshaw, Megan Davis, Fidelis Morgan, Mark Sanderson and myself.

Also in attendance was Celia Imrie who is soon to be seen in Richard Osman's The Thursday Club Murder. Richard E Grant, Glynis Barber and Michael Brandon of Dempsey and Makepeace fame, Twiggy, television presenter Penny Smith and a vast number of others from the world of film and television.

Getting Away With Murder is Lynda La Plante's long awaited memoir which many of us have been looking forward to for quite sometime. Lynda has had a long career and whilst she is best known for introducing us to Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect, she has also been involved in other crime related programmes such as Z-Cars,

The Sweeney, The Professionals, The Governor, Trial & Retribution and Bergerac to name a few. She also wrote the six part robbery series The Widows in 1983. Widows was remade in 2018 as a US set film and was directed by Steve McQueen. Lynda is currently the author of over 50 novels the most recent being Whole Life Sentence in 2024.

Lynda La Plante has been given a vast number of awards and they include a CBE in 2008,. an Edgar Award in 1993, two Emmy Awards in 1993 and 1994. The Dennis Potter BAFTA Award for Screen Writing in 2001. In 2009 she was inducted into the Crime Thriller Awards Hall of Fame . In 2013 she was awarded an Honorary Fellowship with the Forensic Science Society (FSSoc), and most recently in 2024 she was awarded the CWA Diamond Dagger.

Getting Away With Murder: My Unexpected Life on Page, Stage and Screen by Lynda La Plante (Bonnier Zaffre) Out Now

Lynda La Plante has lived an illustrious life and has the stories to prove it. From her early days in Liverpool to her unexpected acceptance into RADA, joining peers Anthony Hopkins, John Hurt and Ian McShane; from beginning her scriptwriting career with Widows and Prime Suspect and becoming a BAFTA award-winning writer and producer, Lynda's tales of stage and screen will have you gasping in shock as well as laughing in the aisles.  Lynda has an important story to tell, one of breaking down stereotypes and blazing a trail for others along the way. Starting her writing career in the eighties, an era of entrenched gender inequality both in front of and behind the camera, Lynda faced innumerable obstacles to her vision.  Getting Away with Murder shows how she overcame them to create generation-defining television and become a multi-million-copy Sunday Times bestselling author. Still at the very top of her game, Lynda shares her story on her own terms, in a way that's guaranteed to make you laugh, cry and be inspired to live a life without limits.