This novel took me back to the 1970s. Policing was a different matter in those days, no DNA, no protective suits and plenty of sexism and racism. We meet Jane Tennison in this novel as a probationer in the Metropolitan police force. The novel has a couple of different crimes in it and so feels like two novels. It is certainly long and could have been edited to be a bit slimmer. Sometimes detail is good in crime fiction but some of this was unnecessary. The first crime is a murder of a young woman. The second is a bank robbery that goes horribly wrong. ( )

I am not too enthusiastic about this book. The language and the structure of the sentences were so simple, short and old fashioned. I am just not used to this way of writing, hence 3 stars only.

I will need to recheck with her earlier work... I am pretty sure that the Prime Suspect series was written differently. ( )

TENNISON: A JANE TENNISON THRILLER (Book 1) by Lynda LaPlante.
“Before Prime Suspect there was Tennison - this is her story.”

It is 1973 and Jane Tennison is a probationer, a recent grad of the Metropolitan Police Training Academy. She is placed in Hackney (an area of London) where a Dickens’ novel ‘seems to come to life’. Rife with racism, sexism, crime, vice, cruelty, grittiness, male-domination and manipulation, Jane struggles to keep her head above water in this atmosphere.
Her character’s personality is hard to pin down as she is (or seems) so young, so inexperienced, so vulnerable. Yet there is an inner toughness, stubbornness, confidence and resolve. She is also uncannily intuitive and intelligent.
TENNISON is a very dramatic British police procedural. The plot is exceptional and the characters very well-developed. The ‘sense of place’ is also very strong.
TENNISON offers a very interesting perspective of the early 1970s. There is constant change, constant societal and cultural disruption. I admire an author tackling this time period.
TENNISON is painful to read at times. Jane is so manipulated; so looked down upon by her male ‘superiors’. I had to take several reading ‘breaks’ and calm down.
TENNISON, the book, made it easier to accept and admire the TV production of this title. I was unsettled by the TV production and didn’t know why, as I am a huge fan of Lynda LaPlante and her Prime Suspect production. I concluded that the character of Jane Tennison is so complex, especially as a young probationer, that the new series couldn’t develop Jane’s character (in 1 show) to the point where we can see an older, more mature Jane, played (flawlessly) by Helen Mirren.
I would heartily recommend this book and subsequent series. ( )

This book is a police procedural that takes place in London during the 1970s when women were first introduced into the same police force as men. The main character of the book is probation officer WPC Jane Tennison. The police must solve the murders of two young drug addicts as well as a planned bank robbery.

I feel most of the book was well written with a few errors here and there. However, it felt to me that this should be two separate books as the murders are solved halfway through the book, and then the next half of the bank concentrates on the planned bank robbery. ( )

It is my understanding this book is the first in a series that provide the back story to the main character in the TV show Prime Suspect. Having never seen that show I went into this read with an open mind and completely unbiased. What I found was a pretty likable main character and a pretty well done mystery. The setting is the early 1970's which I thought was such a great surprise. So very quickly you realize this is a time period way before all the fancy forensics of today and the author did a great job in conveying those elements of the police procedure. The author also did a great job in conveying that time period through the language and clothing descriptions. My main complaint is I really felt like this was at least 100 pages too long. I found myself getting a bit bored through the middle and wishing it was moving along at a faster clip. Many thanks to the publisher for providing with a copy in exchange for an honest opinion ( )