Product Description

Who would abandon a child in a stretch of woodland? Or at the top of a derelict building? DI Kate Burrows is sure there's a connection between similar incidents and when one chid dies, she know's she's in a race against time to stop a ruthless killer.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #303507 in Books
• Published on: 2000-11-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Leading an investigation into the neglect and abandonment of a number of young Grantley children throws DI Kate Burrows into contact with the most vile and repugnant of criminals. As a mother herself, Kate finds their crimes almost incomprehensible. And with the case becoming ever more sinister, she knows she needs to find answers quickly.

Emotionally drained by the rigours of the investigation, it's a real struggle for Kate to find the energy to deal with the complex problems unfolding in her domestic life. Despite assurances to the contrary it seems Patrick Kelly, hardman and love of DI Burrows' life, is still firmly entrenched in the East End underworld. When a body turns up in Patrick's seedy Soho club it seems he has finally got in over his head and the only person in a position to help him is Kate.

Set in familiar Cole territory of East End London, Broken is every bit as gritty and compelling as The Ladykiller. The story as it unfolds is gruesome, uncomfortable and peppered with violence but it is also carefully and thoroughly researched. Martina Cole knows what life in Grantley is and does not shy away from using the strong language of the street in addition to enough cockney rhyming slang to put any would-be pearly king to the test. A well-paced, gripping page-turner with strong, credible female characters, Broken definitely fits the unputdownable category. --Sarah Crawford

Synopsis
Who would abandon a child in a stretch of woodland? Or at the top of a derelict building? DI Kate Burrows is sure there's a connection between similar incidents and when one chid dies, she know's she's in a race against time to stop a ruthless killer.

About the Author
Martina Cole was born and brought up in Essex. She is the bestselling author of eleven novels set in London's gangland, and her most recent three novels have gone straight to No. 1 in the Sunday Times bestseller lists.

Customer Reviews

An ok book but NOT the best of Martina's
A GOOD START TO BOOK BUT TRAILS OFF LATER AND THOUGH IT MAY WELL BE TRUE TO LIFE THE STORY GETS A BIT GRIM AND DEPRESSING. THERE ARE NO "GOOD" CHARACTERS SO MAKES IT HARDER TO BECOME EMOTIONALLY INVOLVED. AN UNPREDICTIBLE READ IN PARTS WHICH I LIKE. I COULDN'T GUESS HOW IT WAS GOING TO FINISH AND SO, A FAIRLY ENJOYABLE READ. WORTH GETTING FROM LIBRARY AT LEAST!!!

Terrible
I have read a few of Martina coles books (Good night Lady, Two Women, Dangerous lady, Maura's Game, the runaway)so you could say i'm a fan, but this has to be the worst book she has wrote so far, I was extremley disappointed with this book it was boring and depressing all at the time, I really struggled to finish book not impressed in the slightest

Disappointing
Having enjoyed Cole's The Runaway and The Ladykiller, I had high hopes for Broken. While Cole is no literary genius, the other two books had been enjoyable page-turners with interesting characters, but having said that, they were still full of anachromisms and sloppy mistakes (a Gerry and the Pacemakers song is memorably credited to Freddie and the Dreamers in The Runaway, for example). Broken, however, is a mess. What begins as an interesting mystery of children disappearing, apparently being dumped by mothers who appear to be innocent of the crime, degenerates into a farce. The side story of Patric Kelly and Boris is tediius, and the ease with which Willy disposes of the Russian and his henchman is laughable. There are also incomplete sentences and poorly punctuated sections which opens up the question of what good Cole's proof reader/editor is. Also, the leading character Kate Burrows has degenerated from the feasible, likeable character of The Ladykiller into a two-dimentional, hard-nosed and yet overtly sentimental foul-mouthed thug. We are forever being reminded of how beautiul Kelly and Kate are, and how big a heart Willy has - pass the sick bag. Kate's mother is a boring cariceture of down-to-earth Irish "good sense", and Kate's daughter, who may have added some much needed complexity (as she did in The Ladykiller) has been all but written out and despatched to Australia. Also, there is way too much unbelievable and over-long dialogue, which demonstrates a lack of confidence in describing plot nuances by the author.

I have given the book two stars rather than one as the fist 200-or-so pages are compelling. And talking of the pages, while there are over 600 of them, there are not many words per page, perhaps an average of six or seven per sparse line. So, rather than 600-plus pages, this book could easily have been half that, or even less.

In conclusion, Broken isn't a terrible book - it IS readable, but well before the end I realised that in this case at least, Martina Cole has given the novel an appropriate title. She might also want to consider branching out and away from the London Irish community, as she has done it to death.