This is another life story from Martina Cole, telling the story of Cathy Conner. Daughter of a dock-dolly, living in squalor in the East End, Cathy’s life is changed when an incident leads to her being taken into care. Of course, in this case ‘care’ is used in the loosest possible sense of the word, and Cathy very quickly decides she wants out… and so she goes on the run. Finding herself in Soho, a transvestite names Desrae rescues her, and turns the path of her life around. Then there is Eamonn Docherty, son of her former stepfather, and a soul to whom Cathy had incredible, incomprehensible love and loyalty towards. He flees to New York after a murder, and makes a life for himself there as a criminal… but of course eventually he returns, and his path crosses with Cathy’s again.
I found the first part of the novel quite difficult to read, because almost all of the characters are thoroughly unlikeable. This occasionally includes the protagonist herself, though for different reasons than most. Most of the characters are harsh, often violent, with motivations and justifications that just don’t ring true. Cathy is, at first, a basically good kid that occasionally acts out-of-character.
After a while, though, the style settles down, especially after Desrae is introduced. Transvestites and gays were not readily accepted in 1970’s London, but Desrae has a measure of protection from his lover, who is a big ‘face’ in the area. Desrae’s character is wonderful, motherly and genuinely kind, though very worldly. He makes light of many situations, and has learned to live in a world that doesn’t widely accept him. While Martina’s style of introducing and describing these characters doesn’t quite sit right with me (it is far too expositional for my tastes), I found myself rapidly coming to like Desrae. With Cathy herself (after her life story catches up with her character) and, eventually, the ‘good-cop-bad-cop’ Richard Gates, there were some characters I could relate to. After that I began to enjoy the story.
Martina Cole writes in a cockney accent. Her written Irish, American and Italian accents are slightly less believable, and even her Londoners eventually begin to all sound the same. The cockney rhyming slang and angry character monologues start to ‘get on your wick’. The general writing style is third person limited, which means that each scene is described through the eyes of a particular character. This usually works quite well. However, I take issue with the fact that it often switches perspective in the middle of scenes, or even paragraphs. I also take issue with minor characters being introduced in scenes told from their perspective, for them only to be killed in the next scene. I would consider it unnecessary, as most of what she tells about them (usually about their being a psycho, and generally unpleasant individual) could be told just as well from a different perspective.
Still, these little bugaboos aside, the story of Cathy Conner and her life in the Soho underworld is occasionally funny and heart-warming. Her unconditional love for the complete jackass that is Eamonn Docherty is strangely understandable from her background, and only serves to make you feel more sorry for her. Her relations with her odd ‘family’ consisting of a transvestite, a renowned ‘Madam’, a New York gangster, a bent policeman and her beautiful daughter makes for a varied life, spanning all the ups and downs one can expect from a life of crime led by a basically decent individual.
The things that annoy me most about Martina Cole annoy me because they crop up in all of her novels. I think that almost all of her stories include paedophilia, rape, incest and whores on one level or another, while gun crime and drugs are taken as read in almost every situation. The main character is almost invariably an attractive female ‘survivor’ lead into a life because of a desire to escape a more hideous earlier one. Cole’s children also have the ring-of-false about them, although I am the first to admit that I had a sheltered and happy, normal childhood in a privileged area, while the children in these books have led a much harsher lives. Still, even the more privileged children seem old before their time in these books. The minor characters; gangsters, hard-men, whores; seem to draw from a very small stock of characters that Martina keeps in a file and draws at random. The secondary main characters, next to the charismatic, strong female lead, tend to be a little more varied, but even they sometimes draw on a series of consistent tropes.
As stories about the criminal underworld, Cole’s novels work quite well, but the repetition is somewhat tiresome. On its own, any one of the novels is interesting and enjoyable. If you have never read any Martina Cole and enjoy books of the same persuasion, I have no doubt that you will enjoy your first Martina Cole book… whichever one you pick. Perhaps you are also of the persuasion that could read as many as you like and still enjoy each one on its own merits. All I know is that I am not, particularly, and while I read all of them, and often even feel some empathy with the characters, I do not enjoy them as much as I did my first Martina Cole novel, ‘Maura’s Game’.
All that said, I did enjoy ‘The Runaway,’ probably more than some of Martina’s books. It was worth reading, if only for Desrae, and by the end, though things seem to have taken a slide downhill, there is still the feeling that it could all work out for the best. And it’s still not enough to put me off reading the two remaining Martina Cole novels I have waiting on my shelf.
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