Irish crime writer’s popularity is Sky high
Martina Cole’s The Take, which was filmed on location in Ireland earlier this year, premiered on Sky 1 on Wednesday.
Set in the East End of London, it stars Tom Hardy, Kierston Wareing and Tom Cox.
The drama unfolds in the city’s criminal underworld over 10 tumultuous years, from the height of Thatcherism to the birth of New Labour.
Ms Cole, a niece of former Cork Fine Gael Senator and city councillor, Dino Cregan, has published 15 novels about London’s gangster underworld – the most recent three going straight into the Sunday Times bestseller list at number one.
The youngest of five children, she comes from a large Irish family in Britain. Her mother, a psychiatric nurse was from Dublin, her father a merchant seaman from Cork.
While just married in her early 20s, she juggled writing in her spare time with running a home and working, but it wasn’t until she was 30 that she decided to seriously devote herself to writing.
She gave up her job as a secretary, bought an electric typewriter and decided she would “give it a year”. Fifteen novels later, Ms Cole is a phenomenon and was the biggest selling adult fiction hardback author of 2008.
Two of her previous novels, Dangerous Lady and The Jump have previously been adapted for ITV.
Meanwhile, it was confirmed last night that Ms Cole, who still has family links in Cork and who has sold over eight million books, will be among the guests at the 2009 West Cork Literary Festival in Bantry next month.
She will be in conversation with Aidan Stanley on Friday, July 10, in the Maritime Hotel at 8.30pm. Booking: 027-55987.
* www.westcorkliteraryfestival.ie
