Carole Cadwallader says of Martina Cole, in the Guardian:
The Take wasn’t only the bestselling hardback of 2005, but won the Best Crime Thriller at the British Book Awards. And in a literary writer, her use of dialectal expressions would be commented on and praised. High-brow writers using working-class or regional voices is the kind of thing that wins awards – think Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre or London Fields by Martin Amis.
Or, you know, Damon Runyon. Martina Cole herself says, in the Guardian:
“You know what? I’ve always had critics right from day one. They go on about the violence but you know someone once said to me, if you was a man you’d have been the Irvine Welsh of the south-east. But I’m not. I’m a blonde. Worst of all I’m a blonde Essex girl. Do you know what I mean? And I don’t just mean that there’s still prejudice against Essex girls. I think there’s prejudice against most women. I think there always will be and always has been.
“I don’t care what nobody says, you still have to do better. If you’re in a job, it’s a male-orientated world, and my job is very male-orientated. Statistically, women buy more books. But statistically men get paid more money. You tell me if you think there’s something wrong with that?”
Her agent says, also in the Guardian: “”Ah, the posh papers have arrived. They always catch up in the end.”
Darley Anderson, Darley Anderson. I’m sure I met him somewhere in, oh, 1996 or 7, responded to his invitation to send him my manuscript, and had a very polite letter back in response… I think he didn’t dislike my manuscript; I seem to remember quite a bit of handwriting on the letter. But he didn’t think it was gonna make me a star.
From The Graft:
He willed his body to be still. All he needed now on top of everything else was her up and ranting her head off.
Tammy Leary liked her Sooty and Sweep and no one interfered with that -not if they valued their own hearing anyway; Her nasal twang he could cope with in the day; he loved her dearly after all. But at night her voice sounded like a banshee wailing, and that banshee had a toothache and a temper on it. Best leave her to sleep, especially tonight with the storm well on its way overhead and his neck and shoulders stiff with pain and the trepidation that was surrounding him.
He closed his eyes once more, but knew he would not sleep. Then he heard it.
He opened his eyes and lay motionless. Sweat still covered his body when he felt the first chill hit him. He was straining to hear now, every fibre of his being on red alert. Thunder clapped loudly overhead and a flash of lightning lit up the room. He slid quietly from bed and tiptoed across the wooden floor of the bedroom. The en-suite light was on and there was a crack of light coming from underneath the door. It was enough for him to see by.
Nick slipped out on to the landing.
The rain was heavier now; he could hear it surrounding the house.
He stopped dead as he heard the muffled movements once more. Someone was moving around downstairs. He could hear the sounds of drawers opening and closing. His heart was thundering in his chest, so loud he wondered if anyone else could hear it. He passed his sons’ bedrooms and was relieved to see that their doors were shut tight. At the top of the staircase he paused and listened once more before descending the staircase as quietly as he could. At the bottom he felt inside the large umbrella pot and located the baseball bat he’d left there for just such an occasion as this.
I love that: “The rain was heavier now; he could hear it surrounding the house.”
DAMN it. Back to work.
Oh, and by the way, Martina Cole also says, on her website (to Johnathan Margolis, also for the Guardian, in 2001:
“I’d rather mix with bank robbers than people with no soul.”
