DEADLIER THAN THE MALE – THE BEST OF WOMEN CRIME WRITERS
When Dr Kay Scarpetta made her first Y incision in 1990, Patricia Cornwell carved out her own niche from the body of contemporary crime writing. ‘Forensic Fiction’ was born. ‘Predator’ is her latest Scarpetta thriller, featuring the usual cast exhuming the evidence as Cornwell dismembers the plot around them. Powerful storytelling and detailed forensic procedure are the hallmarks pointing to another bestseller. Having created the genre Cornwell must now endure the flattery of a host of imitators; Kathy Reichs, Tess Gerritsen, and Karin Slaughter among them. Patricia Cornwell was first into the autopsy room, however, and with her latest novel proves she is still a cut above the rest.
Martina Cole has also staked out her own territory. Martina’s manor is the London underworld, where there is honour among thieves and violence has the currency of cash. ‘The Take’ plays out in the same mean streets as her previous bestsellers and is told in the same brutish style. The sentences are short. And the clichés come thick and fast. Cole portrays a parallel world to our own, with inverted value systems and its own language. Those who break the criminal code are ‘well out of order’ and can expect to be ‘chivved’ with a ‘shank’. She mixes a strong cocktail of drug fuelled petty hoodlums and their codependent women into a plot laced with violent retribution, served up with strong language and louder-than-life characters. This heady brew is increasingly popular, Martina has had a succession of No 1 bestselling books in both hardback and paperback, and total sales of her books now exceed 4 million copies.
Of a previous Martina Cole novel THE MIRROR wrote, ‘It’s vicious, nasty and utterly compelling’. Of P.D. James THE SUNDAY TIMES wrote, ‘She is the greatest contemporary writer of classic crime.’ Cole and James are two highly successful female authors writing at the same time in the same genre, yet utterly different in content, style, and audience. ‘The Lighthouse’ is a Cornish set murder mystery featuring the poetry-writing police Commander, Adam Dalgliesh. The action centres on an imaginary island off the Cornish coast, a locale whose violent pirate and wrecker past has echoes in the contemporary tragedy. P.D. James vividly evokes a sense of place, an atmospheric backdrop against which her well refined characters struggle through the intricate plot. P.D. James is a national treasure; a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature; a former governor of the BBC; a member of the Arts Council; on the board of the British Council and a serving Magistrate. She has received honorary degrees from seven British universities, was awarded the OBE in 1983, created a life peer in 1991, and elected President of the Society of Authors in 1997. Martina Cole lives in Essex.
This review was first published in the 'Times & Star' on 18th November 2005. The copyright remains the property of The Derwent Bookshop.
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