The Dirty Dozen - Lynda La Plante

 

I have been a fan of Prime Suspect, the British TV series starring Helen Mirren as Detective Jane Tennison, for a number of years now. Truth be told, even though it was really Helen Mirren's presence that first drew me to the series, the shows are so well done that the series soon became one of my favorites. But despite all of that background, I had not read one of the Lynda La Plante Tennison novels until I spotted The Dirty Dozen at my library a while back. And as it turns out, The Dirty Dozen, despite it being book five of a nine-book series, is not a bad place to jump in because this one marks the beginning of a whole new phase of Jane's police career.

It's April 1980, and Jane is about to break new ground for female detectives by becoming the first female assigned to the Flying Squad, a group of cowboy-cops tasked exclusively with investigating the armed robbery of banks, armored cars, and other businesses with a heavy cash flow. At the moment, the reputation of the Flying Squad is somewhere between notorious and renowned; it all depends on who is answering the question. Jane herself has no doubts about the group. She is proud that she was chosen to break the Flying Squad gender barrier, and is excited about starting her new Met assignment.

Little does Jane know that she is only part of what is seen by the higher-ups as a temporary experiment to determine if adding a female to the mix might make the Dirty Dozen at least a little less likely to go off the rails when it comes to dealing with suspects and evidence. Part of the Flying Squad is already under official internal investigation, and desperate times require desperate measures. Jane is that desperate measure. Of course a secret like that one is destined to leak, and after Jane learns the truth she is more determined than ever to prove that she is up to anything the rest of the squad can throw at her.

The Dirty Dozen is first and foremost a police procedural during which Jane and her new partners try to solve a botched bank robbery that sees one off-duty policeman shot and another crashing his car into a nearby residence during the ensuing chase. It is a detailed day-to-day account of how the next interview, clue, or sudden burst of inspiration, leads Jane and the boys to the right suspects - and how they hold off arresting the bunch until a rock-solid case against them, one guaranteed to get a conviction, can be built. 

But The Dirty Dozen is also a reflection of the times in which it is set, a time when women police officers were upwardly limited and (hopefully) treated with less respect by their fellow male officers than they are today. Jane's struggle to gain respect and get past all the built-in barriers she faces is what sets The Dirty Dozen apart from the common procedural. Now I'm only trying to figure out if I want to go back to the beginning of the series or continue on from this turning point in Jane Tennison's career.