Revealed: Crime writer Lynda La Plante's little-known car crash tragedy and lifelong love of motoring - as she's banned from driving for speeding

Published: 13:24, 9 August 2026 | Updated: 13:24, 9 August 2026 She once boasted of 'bombing around' in her beloved Smart car, owned a Jaguar, a Range Rover and a Rolls-Royce – and described motoring as her lifelong 'guilty pleasure'. But crime writer Lynda La Plante's passion for cars has now ended in a six-month driving ban after she amassed a staggering 24 penalty points for speeding through 20mph zones. And the punishment comes more than eight decades after the Prime Suspect creator's family was shattered by a devastating road tragedy. For the Daily Mail can reveal that La Plante, 83, grew up in the shadow of the death of her sister, Dail, who was struck by an articulated lorry shortly before Christmas in 1942. Their mother was six months pregnant with Lynda when Dail was hit while crossing a road near the family home in Crosby, Merseyside, just days after turning six. The little girl was caught beneath the vehicle's double wheels, suffering catastrophic injuries to her brain and body. La Plante, who was this week disqualified after admitting breaking 20mph limits near her £6million home in Kingston-upon-Thames five times, has previously described how the tragedy dominated her childhood home. In her 2024 autobiography, Getting Away With Murder: My Unexpected Life On Page, Stage And Screen, she wrote that Dail was 'ever present in our house, though never present in my lifetime'. Crime writer Lynda La Plante's lifelong passion for cars has now ended in a six-month driving ban after she amassed a staggering 24 penalty points. Pictured: La Plante outside Lavender Hill Magistrates' Court in London on Monday  The punishment comes more than eight decades after the Prime Suspect creator's family was shattered by a devastating road tragedy. Her sister, Dail (left, with their brother Michael), was struck by an articulated lorry shortly before Christmas in 1942 She recalled her mother saying: 'I have four children. My first was Dail. The most beautiful one.' La Plante wrote: 'For her, Dail remained forever a child. She never grew old. 'From the day she died at the age of six, she was the underlying, unspoken void that filled the expanse of our house. 'Up until that point, my parents had been religious. High up in the Anglican Church, I believe. But not after Dail's death. "There can be no God who would take a child like that," my mother would say.' Dail had attended a nearby convent school because, although it did not share the family's religion, it was deemed the safest option because of its proximity to home. La Plante wrote: 'An older girl had led Dail from the school gates and across the busy main road to admire a Christmas tree hung with baubles and lights. 'Dail was hit, caught between the rolling double wheels of an articulated lorry, and dragged for some distance.' La Plante, born Lynda Titchmarsh, told how she was sometimes dressed in her dead sister's clothes and that 'no one in my family talked about' Dail's death. 'Not my parents. Not my brother, who'd been two years younger and who I suspect never accepted me as a replacement sibling,' she said: 'It was only [La Plante's maternal grandmother] Gertrude who talked about her at all, telling me once that she thought it disgusting that the doctors had let my mother sit by Dail's hospital bed every day and scream like she did. 'My mother was thirty-three years old and six months' pregnant with me at the time.' La Plante created some of British television's most celebrated crime dramas but remains best known for Prime Suspect, starring Dame Helen Mirren as formidable detective Jane Tennison. She has also published more than 40 best-selling novels since her 1987 debut The Legacy. Yet the prolific writer has suggested that her career may now be over following her run-in with the law. La Plante already had nine points on her licence following three earlier speeding offences in June 2023 and June and July 2025. She was handed another 15 points after being caught travelling at speeds between 24mph and 27mph on five occasions between November and April this year. La Plante has previously described how the tragedy dominated her childhood home, saying Dail was 'ever present in our house, though never present in my lifetime'  La Plante (pictured, outside court, with her lawyer, Nick Freeman, known as 'Mr Loophole') was this week disqualified from driving after admitting breaking 20mph limits near her £6million home in Kingston-upon-Thames five times Lavender Hill Magistrates' Court heard that she committed the offences in a Toyota while taking her guard dog, Theo, for walks. The latest convictions brought her total to 24 points – twice the usual threshold for an automatic ban. She was fined £3,330, ordered to pay £130 in costs and handed a £1,332 victim surcharge. La Plante complained that speed-limit signs on the A308 were confusing and said she had inadvertently exceeded the limit while concentrating on driving safely. She warned magistrates that the 'emotional turmoil' of losing her licence could bring her writing life crashing to a halt, telling them: 'It's very, very solitary, and I work exceptionally hard, and I would just stop.' She said use of her vehicle was 'vital for research into her next works of fiction'. Her lawyer, celebrity solicitor Nick Freeman – known as Mr Loophole – argued that driving was a 'vital part of who she is' and that disqualification was excessive. Magistrates, however, rejected the plea, telling La Plante she had not done enough to prove that disqualification would cause her 'exceptional hardship'. La Plante has spoken previously about her lifelong passion for motoring – revealing that while her 1960s contemporaries were 'strung-out' on drugs, cars were her 'guilty pleasure'. She also revealed how she was taken to court after she 'bopped' a parking attendant 'on the nose for handing me a ticket'. La Plante said in her autobiography: 'I did take half a tab of LSD once and lost a shoe. The rest I can't remember. 'At heart I was always straight-laced Lynda. I was then and I'm still like that now. 'Cars were my guilty pleasure in those days and continue to be so. 'Once I started properly earning in TV and in commercials, I bought a white Mini Cooper only to find out later that it was an exceedingly dangerous car. 'When I took it to a garage to have the steering rebalanced, the mechanic revealed it was in fact two halves of two Minis welded together, the newer half having been in an almighty smash-up. I traded it in for a bright yellow VW.' Over the years, La Plante has owned a Rolls-Royce Corniche, Jaguars and a Range Rover, but her favourite was the far more modest Smart car. The prolific writer, who has created some of British television's most celebrated crime dramas, has suggested her career may now be over following her run-in with the law. Pictured: A note the author wrote to the court  La Plante complained that speed-limit signs on the A308 were confusing and said she had inadvertently exceeded the limit while concentrating on driving safely. Pictured: Speed camera footage of the writer's car   In 2024, she described the tiny vehicle as 'the definition of brilliant design', telling The Lady magazine: 'If someone asked me to do an advert for it, I'd do so for free. I absolutely love it.' In the same year, La Plante told The Times: 'I love cars as much as ever. 'I have a Jaguar and a Range Rover Vogue but my favourite is my teeny-weeny Smart car. I bomb around and can always find a parking space.' La Plante suggested that she relies on the use of her car to take her 18-month-old dog, Theo, for walks and claimed she might now be forced to rehome him. She said the nearest park to her seven-bedroomed mansion in Richmond was unsuitable as it was 'alive with joggers'. Giving evidence in court, La Plante told how Theo entered her life following the death of Hugo, her enormous Borzoi, who she said had acted as an unofficial office manager by interrupting her marathon writing sessions. Giving evidence, La Plante said: 'I don't want it to sound trivial – this woman and her dog – but I can't tell you what it was like with this enormous beautiful wolfhound. I don't know how he did it. 'He would come up into my office, it was as if he said "stop." He knew I had been working for five solid hours, and this paw would come up – bang.' The career La Plante says is now at risk is powered by a punishing routine that has continued into her eighties. She previously told she how wakes at 6am with the thought: 'Well, it's very nice to be alive.' '80 is really 50 nowadays,' La Plante said. 'So many of my close friends are the same age and they all seem unbelievably youthful to me, all working. 'I have some toast, a coffee and a yoghurt, then I do 25 lengths in my pool followed by some running and a bath in Epsom salts. Then I'm ready to work. 'I have a little office in my house with floor-to-ceiling books. I keep the blind down as I can't work with sunlight. The concentration is at full tilt for at least four hours. I can become so engrossed, talking to myself, crying and laughing as I write.' La Plante, whose breakthrough as a screenwriter came in 1983 with the hit robbery drama Widows, added: 'I don't have dinner, maybe just a gin and tonic. I find watching TV more exasperating than ever. Why so many adverts for cremation? 'You're enjoying something and up comes another cremation ad and I think, "Are they aiming these at me?"' Before turning to writing, La Plante trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company and appeared in programmes including The Sweeney, The Professionals, Minder and Bergerac. She was married to American musician Richard La Plante, who died in 2025 aged 79, and adopted seven-month-old Lorcan, in 2003, when aged 57. She said in her autobiography: 'Although I'd always been surrounded by good friends, as I neared my late fifties it did bother me more and more that I'd never had children to fill my life. 'Many years before, when I was still an actress and doing part-time work in a cafe in London, I remember seeing a woman park up in a blue Rolls-Royce Corniche car. 'A little blond-haired boy sat on the back seat. "One day, I'm going to have both," I remember thinking to myself.' She later added: 'Incidentally, I did buy that blue Rolls-Royce Corniche and Lorcan sat with his blond curls on the back seat just as I'd dreamed of so many years before.'