Close [Paperback]

I am such an ardent fan/reader of Martina Cole, every one of her books has been in my hands since her very first, I cannot wait for her new books to be finished and I count off the days till the new one hits the shelves. But who wrote "The Close" was it a Martina Cole clone, it was such a dissapointment almost a repeat from all her previous books. The same lines and events were repeated over and over again (from previous stories). Some of the language had absolutely no representation to the story it seemed just for effect at times and the violence will give some very good ideas to some nasty people. The story had no substance it just seemed to go on and on with words to fill pages. So many authors in the past have written books on their names "too big or their boots" comes to mind. Please, please Martina you have so much talent don't let this happen with you. You can write white knuckle, gripping, fantastic books that we are all unable to put down (unlike this one which sent me to sleep after one page)so please don't let "Gangland" rule you so much - you are worth so much more that that. "Two Women" was the best I have ever read but Close was like walking through mud. Get back to your roots girl "PLEASE" otherwise Mandasue Heller will be taking your place.

I was lucky enough to start my Martina Cole reading with such great books as The Know, Ladykiller, The Take & Broken. Whereas those were page-turning, all-action books Ms Coles last two installments (The Graft & Close) were quite disappointing and both were disappointing for the same reason. While both had the usual formula of hard men, tragedy and retribution I feel that Cole spent way too much time focusing on the thoughts and feelings of every character and not enough time on developing the story and moving it along. Quite a big chunk of the pages could have been omitted and nobody would have noticed. The story was there, the characters were there.....I just feel the final product was lacking. Having said that I did enjoy seeing how the lives of the characters changed over the years. But there just wasn't any depth to the story really. The Lance issue was as plain as the nose on your face so couldn't even been classed as a twist yet it went on and on and on. There was definitely some serious repetition and that in itself was driving me insane. But it was worth a read.....I just wouldn't recommend it as a must read.

Meet Lily. Lily is the wife of London gangster Patrick Brodie, and the mother of a tribe of children fathered by several men.
CLOSE follows the story of two generations of the family living in the violent gangland world of London from the 1960s through to the nineties.

CLOSE follows the fortunes of the family by chronicling Lil's life. Born into a poor household with indifferent and sometimes neglectful parents, Lil meets Patrick at the age of fifteen and is married to him by sixteen. Lil's status rises with Patrick's success in the underworld and falls again upon his murder at the hands of rivals.

This is a case where the author would have been well served by using the "less is more" philosophy. For example, three pages are devoted to Patrick's infidelities, when he's unfaithful, his attitude towards the women, how his wife feels about him cheating. It's just too much. One paragraph would have been sufficient. Another instance is the murder of Patrick on his son's birthday. Men rush into the house and repeatedly stab and beat him to death in front of his wife and children. The author relates this event, and then proceeds to retell it from the point of view of several people present. The problem with this is that she is merely restating the same thing with slightly different wording. The reader is offered no new insights into the event. Handled differently, it could have been a brutally stunning passage. However any impact the violence might have had is dulled by this heavy handed overkill.

Author Martina Cole seems to know about the sub-culture of which she writes, and the story could give the reader a real glimpse into this culture of crime. However, plot is a bit thin on the ground and predictable and the characters are one-dimensional shadows of what they could have been. In fact, I didn't care for most of them at all. There was little to like about them and nothing to admire. The book also suffers from being about two hundred pages too long. Martina Cole has many fans. I hope CLOSE doesn't disappoint them as it did me.

One last thing. By page 100, my copy of the book had started to come adrift from the spine and pages were falling out. I'm reasonably careful with the books I read, I don't turn down the pages and I don't bend back the spine. I was lucky: the publishers very kindly gave me a copy of CLOSE to review. Had I paid the retail, I would have been most unhappy to find the book falling apart just one quarter of the way through reading it.