Martina Cole Meet the Author

I certainly wouldn't want to be the one to break that a grizzly bear!

Another Martina Cole thriller, another number one bestseller.

Betrayal continues her journey through the London underworld where,

in Martina Cole's stories, it's the women who are

In this one it's Jade who is plotting to become Miss Big.

For 25 years, since Dangerous Lady, this is an author who has

25 years since Dangerous Lady, Martina, and the ladies

are still pretty dangerous and rough, aren't they?

Yeah, I think I like my dangerous ladies, and I also

I normally write from the point of view of the criminal,

as everybody knows, as opposed to the police.

I don't really write many police procedurals,

so I quite enjoy sort of being on the other

The other side of the coin - it's where you've always been,

in a way, and the brilliance with which you made these

tough women the ones who really ran the show,

I mean, was that something that just came to you accidentally?

You know, I come from a long line of really really strong Irish women,

so I think that's probably got something to do with it.

But also, you know, I'm a very strong woman,

and I think that comes across in the books.

And also I'm a great believer in women, you know -

we don't get mad, we get even, which I think comes across as well.

It's about women being put in extraordinary positions

in their lives and making the best of it.

Betrayal, just out in paperback, is I think the 23rd novel -

and Betrayal, the title, is the essence of the book.

Now, I'm not going to give away the plot, but once again it's

a woman who's in a position where she can really wield

an extraordinary amount of power, and some pretty big rough tough men

Yeah, well, Jade is a fantastic character.

Aiden was a really terrific character to write too,

But also this is the first time I've ever done sort

of the May-December romance, you know, where the woman's

I like my women to be feisty and, you know, I like them to be able

to take care of themselves, and I think that's very important.

Obviously, you're writing about London and the underworld and so on.

But I mean culturally do you think this is a fascinating

pulsating undercurrent of, you know, the world you know?

You know, growing up in Essex and London...

Well, without crime there'd hardly be any television programmes.

Everybody wants to know, how do you catch the bad guys?

The differences are I don't want my bad guys to get

caught a lot of the time because I end up quite liking them.

But, you know, if you look at it, there's so many programmes now

on police procedurals, especially on serial

killers and all sorts, and I think I probably tapped

into that a long time ago, a long time before women

were writing my kind of books, because it was always

There's so many women now writing books about criminals.

And do you find a lot of your readers are women who rather

enjoy that sense of, you know, the power

You know, my readership's now about 50-50.

I'm still the most requested books in the prison system,

and I'm still the most stolen books from shops, which I

Even in Scotland, in the male prisons,

And I take that as a compliment, because these are the people

And if they think it's realistic, then obviously I must be

I've been doing prison workshops for 25 years.

And what do you make of it, when you go inside and face them?

I mean, I was in Barlinnie twice last year.

I've done a couple of writing classes in there.

I've done Belmarsh for years, Wandsworth, Holloway -

it's been closed now, thank God, it was

But I do a lot of women's prisons, men's prisons.

I've done the Six Book Challenge and I'm still ambassador for that,

to go in and get people reading - not just in prisons,

It's just about getting people back reading books.

When you're in a prison, and you're with some fairly

hard-boiled characters, and presumably you don't

know their real names, or what they've done...

Some of them you've obviously heard of, but I've never ever asked

I think people think you go in and they tell me

I go in there and I do an actual writing class.

Questions and answers - they ask me things they want to know.

And I must admit there have been times when I have known

the people in there, and they've gone,

But I've got to say, it's very worthwhile.

You know, we've got the best education system in the world -

it's free, and I'm still shocked at how many young men especially

cannot read and write by the time they get to prison.

What fascinates you about, you know, the dark side of our lives?

Well, I think it's what fascinates everybody, I mean, a lot

of male authors, you know, with everything from the Godfather,

and I think what really interests me is, you know,

And it can be a very narrow line between an ordinary respectable

Yeah, well, they always say that about the police,

They've had such a thin line between them, you know.

Another little bit and they would be chasing you, you know,

and oftentimes police say that, because a lot of police come

to signings and things - a lot of police, especially

detectives from certain stations around London.

Well, they say, "God, it's just so realistic,"

And that's what I take as a compliment, you know.

How do you think you found that voice, because every

author needs a voice, a sort of confident voice

I mean Dangerous Lady, 25 years ago, was an instant bestseller,

and you've gone on, you know, with this extraordinary

Did it just come to you, that way of talking about them,

I think what the secret for me was I wrote as I spoke,

and I wrote the dialect as I heard the dialect in my head.

You hear it and it just comes to you?

I remember years ago when we were doing Dangerous Lady

as a television series, and Johnny Woods who directed it,

he said, "It was the first book I ever read, Martina,

where it was just like reading a script.

It was like reading a shooting script."

He said, "You don't have that much description,

but what you have is in how people talk and how they react

I don't have reams and reams of, you know,

Do you like some of the bent people that you meet?

people can go either way, you know, and I think more and more

the lines are becoming blurred because of what's happened

with with bankers and what's happened...

It's a very blurred line now between who people actually

think are criminals - people say, you know, "Oh,

he's a bit of a lad," or "He's a rogue," but the man that's just

took everybody's money in the bank, I think they have a completely

Well, that's an interesting philosophical question, isn't it?

In Betrayal, I mean, you're back in this territory that you know.

It's the territory of the street, the territory of the family.

It's all in the end about power, and you love to see,

in the power game, the women at the top.

I like to think that extraordinary things happen to us,

You lose a child, you lose your husband, something terrible happens

and you have to pick yourself up and go on, and I like to think

that my women have all these extraordinary things happen to them

And I like to think that, you know, we all come out on top.

Martina Cole, author of Betrayal, the 23rd book in a series,

I suppose, that began with Dangerous Lady,

What a difference a day make. Compared with the recent heatwave,

today has been much cooler