Lynda La Plante is more than just a writer - she's a bankable commodity, an influential producer and the head of her own company, La Plante Productions. Typically, the writer responsible for several TV series including Widows, Prime Suspect and The Governor has not only a new book in the offing, but also a new four-part series for Channel 4; a film script, Stealth, with Stephen Spielberg, and a new man in her life.
She is in Ireland this weekend to promote the new book, Cold Heart, which is her third thriller starring private investigator, Lorraine Page. My first mistake is to ask whether this is her first time in Ireland.
"Of course not, you soft cow," she shrieks, reminding me that she filmed much of The Governor here, an experience of which she has many fond memories. Unlike her female characters; the ice-queen and former alcoholic, Lorraine Page in Cold Heart and the steely Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison (played by Helen Mirren) in Prime Suspect, Lynda La Plant is pleasantly verbose and is often overtaken by gales of laughter.
She agrees that most people expect her to be like her characters. "What's odd is when they meet me and there's this small, bouncy woman who laughs a lot. These characters are so cold and laid-back whereas I'm like a little ferret. . . The only bit of me in the stories is my sense of humour - for example, the dog Tiger in Cold Heart is just so me. I had a big wolfhound called Tallulah at the time and I just love the dog in that book."
While her characters are not based on her own character, they are based in fact - Helen Mirren is apparently very like the real police woman on whom she based Jane Tennison. Lorraine Page is a different kettle of fish altogether, although she too is based on a real woman. Lynda explains:
"I was in L.A. on a chat show and they asked me how I got my storylines. Well, I said that they came to me and when they asked me what I meant, I said I bought them - people offer me their stories and sometimes I buy them. So the next day this woman came to see me and that's Lorraine Page. To be honest, I'm very glad to see the back of her. She's very, very difficult - kind of crazy really. I had to tone her down because the publishers said no one would identify with her."
It's a method that works - the real "Lorraine Page" was a recovering ex-alcoholic, ex-cop who had killed her child and lost her husband and other children. Even modified slightly, it makes for a fascinating and unusual heroine. There have been plenty of offers from Hollywood for the film rights to the three books, Cold Shoulder, Cold Blood and Cold Heart, and Lynda is sifting through them at the moment.
"I think Susan Sarandon is going to be Lorraine, actually."
Lynda is always involved in the production end of her work, musing that this is perhaps why she doesn't miss the buzz of acting at all. She originally trained at RADA and worked as a television actress but says she always knew that she was really a writer. For Killer Net, the Channel 4 series that goes out on May 5th, she encouraged her sister Jill Titchmarsh, who always casts her projects, to look for the starring part in Ireland.
"We couldn't find the right actress in England at all. I just knew we'd find the right person in Ireland, and we did. She's an actress called Kathy Brolly and I've a feeling she's going to be huge."
La Plante is as up-front about her personal life as she is about her working methods. She has recently celebrated her fiftieth birthday ("I don't know where everybody gets the idea I'm 52. Oh well"). She lives in an extensive house in Surrey and she was formerly married to Richard La Plante, a heavy-metal singer and sometimes novelist. They divorced in 1996 - not, it seems, particularly amicably. "We just spit on him now," she comments pithily. There is, however, a new man in her life - a prosecutor from Los Angeles, who she jokes, she uses for all her legal checks.
Cold Heart, which is the gripping, macabre stuff her fans have come to love, is the final Lorraine Page book. This is partly because she'd had enough of the real life "Lorraine" but also because she didn't want to continue writing for the same character - the same reason she stopped doing the Prime Suspect series.
"I don't like to feel trapped. If I do write another one, I'd have to call it Cold Feet," and she hoots with laughter again.
Lynda La Plante will be signing Cold Heart in the Hughes & Hughes bookshop in the St Stephen's Green Shopping Centre, Dublin, tomorrow from 2 p.m.- 3 p.m.