Afternoon Reading - Red Herrings - Unwanted Presence

"Unwanted Presence" by Lynda La Plante. Read by Rory Kinnear. Crime writing at its twisted best... Leading authors Lynda La Plante, Brian McGilloway and Andrew Taylor tackle the red herring - that most effective weapon in the crime writer's arsenal - in a series of new short stories specially written for BBC Radio 4. Produced by Kirsteen Cameron. About the author: Born in Liverpool, Lynda La Plante trained for the stage at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). Work with the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company led to a career as a television actress with regular roles in dramas such as Fox, Minder and The Sweeney. While filming The Gentle Touch as an actress, La Plante wrote four plot outlines and sent them to the show's producers. All were returned as unsuitable, but on one someone had written 'this is wonderful!' That was all the encouragement La Plante needed, and that brief synopsis eventually became the phenomenally successful TV series Widows. La Plante's original scripts for the highly acclaimed Prime Suspect (starring Helen Mirren) garnered many awards and set a new standard for television drama.