Below is the complete list of Lynda La Plante books in order. For each series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
Publication Order of Anna Travis Books
Publication Order of CSI Jessica Russell Books
- The Scene of the Crime (2025)
The Scene of the Crime was published in 2025 and is listed as book #1 in the CSI Jessica Russell series.
Publication Order of DC Jack Warr Books
- Pure Evil (2023)
In the DC Jack Warr series, Pure Evil is book #4 and was published in 2023. 
Publication Order of Dolly Rawlins Books
Publication Order of Jane Tennison Books
- Unholy Murder (2021)
Published in 2021, Unholy Murder is listed as book #7 in the Jane Tennison series. - A Taste of Blood (2023)
In the Jane Tennison series, A Taste of Blood is book #9 and was published in 2023. - Whole Life Sentence (2024)
Whole Life Sentence was first published in 2024; within the Jane Tennison series, it is listed as book #10.
Publication Order of Legacy Books
Publication Order of Lorraine Page Books
Publication Order of Prime Suspect Books
Publication Order of Trial and Retribution Books
Publication Order of Standalone Books
- Entwined (1992)
In the Standalone series, Entwined is book #4 and was published in 1992. 
Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas Books
About Lynda La Plante
Lynda La Plante is a British crime writer, screenwriter, producer, and former actress whose career has had an unusually strong influence on both crime fiction and television drama. She is best known for creating Prime Suspect, the landmark television series that introduced DCI Jane Tennison and gave Helen Mirren one of her defining roles. La Plante’s work is built around police investigations, criminal networks, institutional pressure, and women operating in worlds that underestimate or resist them. Her bibliography is best understood as the print side of a much larger storytelling career that has moved between novels, television, adaptation, and production.
Before becoming a writer, La Plante trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and worked as an actress, including stage work with the Royal Shakespeare Company and appearances in British television. That performance background matters because her fiction often has a strong dramatic shape: scenes move quickly, dialogue carries tension, and characters are defined through pressure rather than long exposition. She came to prominence as a writer with Widows, the early 1980s television drama about women who take control of a robbery plan after their criminal husbands are killed. The story later became one of her key book series and remained central enough to her reputation to be adapted again for film decades later.
Her debut novel, The Legacy, appeared in 1987 and was followed by works such as The Talisman, Bella Mafia, and Entwined. These early novels showed her interest in power, inheritance, family loyalty, and crime as something connected to business, class, and ambition. La Plante was never simply a writer of puzzle mysteries. Her strongest material often studies the machinery around crime: the police force, the courts, the prison system, organized criminals, corrupt families, and the people who know how to survive inside those structures.
Prime Suspect remains the central achievement of her career. Jane Tennison became one of crime drama’s most significant female detectives, not because she was softened for the role, but because La Plante placed her directly inside a male-dominated police culture. The later Tennison prequel novels, beginning with Tennison, return to Jane’s early years in the Metropolitan Police and show how a young officer becomes the formidable detective associated with Prime Suspect. These books expand the character’s history while keeping the social and institutional tensions that made her famous.
La Plante’s other major crime series include the Lorraine Page books, the Anna Travis mysteries, Trial and Retribution, The Governor, and the Jack Warr series. Anna Travis, introduced in Above Suspicion, gave La Plante another ambitious female detective moving through murder investigations and professional scrutiny. Jack Warr, beginning with Buried, connects modern police work with the legacy of the Widows world, showing La Plante’s long memory for her own fictional universe.
Her style is direct, gritty, and research-driven. She writes crime as a profession, a system, and a human contest, not just as a puzzle to be solved. Across her books, the appeal lies in strong investigators, dangerous criminals, procedural detail, and moral pressure. Lynda La Plante’s career stands out because she helped shape the language of modern British crime drama while also building a substantial body of novels that carry the same toughness, pace, and fascination with power.