Blunt Force - Lynda La Plante
About the book
Things can't get much worse for detective Jane Tennison. Unceremoniously kicked off the adrenaline-fuelled Flying Squad, she now plies her trade in Gerald Road, a small and sleepy police station in the heart of London's affluent Knightsbridge.
With only petty crime to sink her teeth into, Tennison can feel her career slowly flatlining. That is until the discovery of the most brutal murder Jane has ever seen: Charlie Foxley has been found viciously beaten to death with a cricket bat - his body dismembered and disembowelled.
As a big-time theatrical agent, Foxley had a lot of powerful friends - but just as many enemies. And alongside her old friend DS Spencer Gibbs, Tennison must journey into the salacious world of show business to find out which one is the killer, before they strike again.
About the author
Lynda La Plante was born in Liverpool. She trained for the stage at RADA and worked with the National theatre and RDC before becoming a television actress. She then turned to writing - and made her breakthrough with the phenomenally successful TV series Widows. Her novels have all been international bestsellers.
Her original script for the much-acclaimed Prime Suspect won awards from BAFTA, Emmy, British Broadcasting and Royal Television Society as well as the 1993 Edgar Allan Poe Award. Lynda has written and produced over 170 hours of international television.
Lynda is one of only three screenwriters to have been made an honorary fellow of the British Film Institute and was awarded the BAFTA Dennis Potter Best Writer Award in 2000. In 2008, she was awarded a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List for services to Literature, Drama and Charity.
If you would like to hear from Lynda, please sign up at www.bit.ly/LyndaLaPlanteClub or you can visit www.lyndalaplante.com for further information. You can also follow Lynda on Facebook and Twitter @LaPlanteLynda.
Discover more about the book and author
Watch this video of Lynda La Plante talking about the book.
Learn more about the author on Lynda’s website.
Read this interview with the author
Read this Review
Our Librarian’s Review
Reviewed by Alice
The sixth book in the Tennison series, there was enough explanation of referenced events that the story made sense without having read the previous books. I found Blunt Force an intriguing mystery about the corruption within show business and the police force, with an interesting cast of characters.
While investigating the brutal murder of a theatrical agent, Charles Foxley, Jane is also recovering from her swift demotion from the Flying Squad. A slow dig through some very dark matters, Lynda La Plante creates sympathy for all the characters. She has a very clear descriptive way of writing, that sometimes seems like she is still writing for the screen, and created a brilliantly vivid image of the whole story as I was reading.
I found some sections of the investigation a bit slow, but in the same way the characters did as they got more and more frustrated at not being able to find the killer. It was a fascinating crime drama and La Plante kept me guessing throughout as to who the killer really was.