Opening in 1981 in inner-city Dublin, Snapshots (New Island, €14.99) is the debut novel from prize-winning short-story writer (and barrister) Michael O’Higgins. The investigation and a parallel plot detailing a bank heist provide a narrative framework that builds to an explosive denouement, but this is very much a personal journey as La Plante recounts how Tennison the doe-eyed optimist turns into the steely-eyed pragmatist loved by her fans. La Plante at times overdoes the naive Tennison’s immersion into police argot – every slang phrase must be translated for the sake of Jane, who is from the upmarket area of Maida Vale – but the author revels in portraying a place and time in which sexism, misogyny and racism are taken for granted. A combination of diligence, ambition, eye for detail and luck sees Tennison seconded to a CID investigation of the murder of a 17-year-old girl found naked and strangled in Hackney Marsh adventure playground, and soon Tennison is experiencing a baptism of fire as she is plunged into the world of prostitution, drug addiction and murder.

In Tennison (Simon & Schuster, £20) La Plante takes us back to east London in 1973, when Jane Tennison was a probationary WPC (or 'plonk', in the derogatory term used by her male colleagues). Jane Tennison is one of modern crime fiction's great characters, a trailblazing protagonist who made her first appearance in Lynda La Plante's Prime Suspect, in 1991.

Prime Suspect by Lynda La Plante