Lynda La Plante CBE began her career as an actor in TV and theatre. She graduated from RADA, where her fellow students included Anthony Hopkins and John Hurt. 

La Plante wrote her first treatment for TV, Widows, which went on to become one of the highest rating series in the 1980s. She became a sought-after crime writer, with her debut novel, The Legacy, published in 1987. 

In 1990, La Plante began work on Prime Suspect, which was released in 1991, starring Helen Mirren as DCI Jane Tennison. In 1993, she received the Dennis Potter Award from BAFTA and was made a fellow of the British Film Institute. The success led to her forming her own television production company, La Plante Productions. 

She also wrote and produced multiple shows in the US, with actors including Vanessa Redgrave, Sam Neill, and Rob Lowe. In 2014, she formed a new global rights and production company – La Plante Global. Her current book series features Detective Jack Warr. She received a CBE for services to Literature, Drama and Charity in 2008. 

James Lee Burke’s first novel was compared to the work of Faulkner and Sartre by the New York Times. Despite this, he was out of hardback print for 13 years until his third novel, The Lost Get-Back Boogie was published and submitted for a Pulitzer Prize, after being rejected over 111 times. Over the years, he’s taught at universities, worked as a case worker with former felons, as a pipeliner for an oil company, a long-distance truck driver, and a newspaper reporter.

James Lee Burke has two Edgar Awards, a Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America, and has been a Guggenheim Fellow.