:00:00. > :00:07.I certainly wouldn't want to be the one to break that a grizzly bear!
:00:08. > :00:11.Another Martina Cole thriller, another number one bestseller.
:00:12. > :00:13.Betrayal continues her journey through the London underworld where,
:00:14. > :00:15.in Martina Cole's stories, it's the women who are
:00:16. > :00:22.In this one it's Jade who is plotting to become Miss Big.
:00:23. > :00:24.For 25 years, since Dangerous Lady, this is an author who has
:00:25. > :00:47.25 years since Dangerous Lady, Martina, and the ladies
:00:48. > :00:50.are still pretty dangerous and rough, aren't they?
:00:51. > :00:53.Yeah, I think I like my dangerous ladies, and I also
:00:54. > :00:58.I normally write from the point of view of the criminal,
:00:59. > :01:01.as everybody knows, as opposed to the police.
:01:02. > :01:02.I don't really write many police procedurals,
:01:03. > :01:05.so I quite enjoy sort of being on the other
:01:06. > :01:09.The other side of the coin - it's where you've always been,
:01:10. > :01:11.in a way, and the brilliance with which you made these
:01:12. > :01:14.tough women the ones who really ran the show,
:01:15. > :01:17.I mean, was that something that just came to you accidentally?
:01:18. > :01:23.You know, I come from a long line of really really strong Irish women,
:01:24. > :01:25.so I think that's probably got something to do with it.
:01:26. > :01:27.But also, you know, I'm a very strong woman,
:01:28. > :01:32.and I think that comes across in the books.
:01:33. > :01:34.And also I'm a great believer in women, you know -
:01:35. > :01:38.we don't get mad, we get even, which I think comes across as well.
:01:39. > :01:40.It's about women being put in extraordinary positions
:01:41. > :01:45.in their lives and making the best of it.
:01:46. > :01:54.Betrayal, just out in paperback, is I think the 23rd novel -
:01:55. > :01:56.and Betrayal, the title, is the essence of the book.
:01:57. > :02:00.Now, I'm not going to give away the plot, but once again it's
:02:01. > :02:02.a woman who's in a position where she can really wield
:02:03. > :02:06.an extraordinary amount of power, and some pretty big rough tough men
:02:07. > :02:10.Yeah, well, Jade is a fantastic character.
:02:11. > :02:15.Aiden was a really terrific character to write too,
:02:16. > :02:21.But also this is the first time I've ever done sort
:02:22. > :02:25.of the May-December romance, you know, where the woman's
:02:26. > :02:31.I like my women to be feisty and, you know, I like them to be able
:02:32. > :02:36.to take care of themselves, and I think that's very important.
:02:37. > :02:40.Obviously, you're writing about London and the underworld and so on.
:02:41. > :02:50.But I mean culturally do you think this is a fascinating
:02:51. > :02:55.pulsating undercurrent of, you know, the world you know?
:02:56. > :02:56.You know, growing up in Essex and London...
:02:57. > :02:59.Well, without crime there'd hardly be any television programmes.
:03:00. > :03:05.Everybody wants to know, how do you catch the bad guys?
:03:06. > :03:10.The differences are I don't want my bad guys to get
:03:11. > :03:13.caught a lot of the time because I end up quite liking them.
:03:14. > :03:16.But, you know, if you look at it, there's so many programmes now
:03:17. > :03:18.on police procedurals, especially on serial
:03:19. > :03:20.killers and all sorts, and I think I probably tapped
:03:21. > :03:23.into that a long time ago, a long time before women
:03:24. > :03:25.were writing my kind of books, because it was always
:03:26. > :03:29.There's so many women now writing books about criminals.
:03:30. > :03:32.And do you find a lot of your readers are women who rather
:03:33. > :03:34.enjoy that sense of, you know, the power
:03:35. > :03:39.You know, my readership's now about 50-50.
:03:40. > :03:43.I'm still the most requested books in the prison system,
:03:44. > :03:45.and I'm still the most stolen books from shops, which I
:03:46. > :03:50.Even in Scotland, in the male prisons,
:03:51. > :03:56.And I take that as a compliment, because these are the people
:03:57. > :04:00.And if they think it's realistic, then obviously I must be
:04:01. > :04:05.I've been doing prison workshops for 25 years.
:04:06. > :04:09.And what do you make of it, when you go inside and face them?
:04:10. > :04:12.I mean, I was in Barlinnie twice last year.
:04:13. > :04:14.I've done a couple of writing classes in there.
:04:15. > :04:18.I've done Belmarsh for years, Wandsworth, Holloway -
:04:19. > :04:20.it's been closed now, thank God, it was
:04:21. > :04:23.But I do a lot of women's prisons, men's prisons.
:04:24. > :04:29.I've done the Six Book Challenge and I'm still ambassador for that,
:04:30. > :04:32.to go in and get people reading - not just in prisons,
:04:33. > :04:36.It's just about getting people back reading books.
:04:37. > :04:38.When you're in a prison, and you're with some fairly
:04:39. > :04:42.hard-boiled characters, and presumably you don't
:04:43. > :04:44.know their real names, or what they've done...
:04:45. > :04:48.Some of them you've obviously heard of, but I've never ever asked
:04:49. > :04:54.I think people think you go in and they tell me
:04:55. > :04:58.I go in there and I do an actual writing class.
:04:59. > :05:01.Questions and answers - they ask me things they want to know.
:05:02. > :05:04.And I must admit there have been times when I have known
:05:05. > :05:05.the people in there, and they've gone,
:05:06. > :05:10.But I've got to say, it's very worthwhile.
:05:11. > :05:14.You know, we've got the best education system in the world -
:05:15. > :05:16.it's free, and I'm still shocked at how many young men especially
:05:17. > :05:19.cannot read and write by the time they get to prison.
:05:20. > :05:23.What fascinates you about, you know, the dark side of our lives?
:05:24. > :05:26.Well, I think it's what fascinates everybody, I mean, a lot
:05:27. > :05:29.of male authors, you know, with everything from the Godfather,
:05:30. > :05:32.and I think what really interests me is, you know,
:05:33. > :05:40.And it can be a very narrow line between an ordinary respectable
:05:41. > :05:44.Yeah, well, they always say that about the police,
:05:45. > :05:49.They've had such a thin line between them, you know.
:05:50. > :05:52.Another little bit and they would be chasing you, you know,
:05:53. > :05:55.and oftentimes police say that, because a lot of police come
:05:56. > :05:58.to signings and things - a lot of police, especially
:05:59. > :06:01.detectives from certain stations around London.
:06:02. > :06:05.Well, they say, "God, it's just so realistic,"
:06:06. > :06:09.And that's what I take as a compliment, you know.
:06:10. > :06:12.How do you think you found that voice, because every
:06:13. > :06:16.author needs a voice, a sort of confident voice
:06:17. > :06:23.I mean Dangerous Lady, 25 years ago, was an instant bestseller,
:06:24. > :06:25.and you've gone on, you know, with this extraordinary
:06:26. > :06:31.Did it just come to you, that way of talking about them,
:06:32. > :06:36.I think what the secret for me was I wrote as I spoke,
:06:37. > :06:40.and I wrote the dialect as I heard the dialect in my head.
:06:41. > :06:42.You hear it and it just comes to you?
:06:43. > :06:46.I remember years ago when we were doing Dangerous Lady
:06:47. > :06:50.as a television series, and Johnny Woods who directed it,
:06:51. > :06:54.he said, "It was the first book I ever read, Martina,
:06:55. > :06:56.where it was just like reading a script.
:06:57. > :06:58.It was like reading a shooting script."
:06:59. > :07:00.He said, "You don't have that much description,
:07:01. > :07:03.but what you have is in how people talk and how they react
:07:04. > :07:08.I don't have reams and reams of, you know,
:07:09. > :07:13.Do you like some of the bent people that you meet?
:07:14. > :07:21.people can go either way, you know, and I think more and more
:07:22. > :07:25.the lines are becoming blurred because of what's happened
:07:26. > :07:27.with with bankers and what's happened...
:07:28. > :07:29.It's a very blurred line now between who people actually
:07:30. > :07:33.think are criminals - people say, you know, "Oh,
:07:34. > :07:36.he's a bit of a lad," or "He's a rogue," but the man that's just
:07:37. > :07:39.took everybody's money in the bank, I think they have a completely
:07:40. > :07:43.Well, that's an interesting philosophical question, isn't it?
:07:44. > :07:46.In Betrayal, I mean, you're back in this territory that you know.
:07:47. > :07:50.It's the territory of the street, the territory of the family.
:07:51. > :07:54.It's all in the end about power, and you love to see,
:07:55. > :07:56.in the power game, the women at the top.
:07:57. > :08:03.I like to think that extraordinary things happen to us,
:08:04. > :08:08.You lose a child, you lose your husband, something terrible happens
:08:09. > :08:12.and you have to pick yourself up and go on, and I like to think
:08:13. > :08:14.that my women have all these extraordinary things happen to them
:08:15. > :08:21.And I like to think that, you know, we all come out on top.
:08:22. > :08:25.Martina Cole, author of Betrayal, the 23rd book in a series,
:08:26. > :08:27.I suppose, that began with Dangerous Lady,
:08:28. > :08:47.What a difference a day make. Compared with the recent heatwave,
:08:48. > :08:48.today has been much cooler