Close

Martina Cole
Grand Central Publishing (2008)
ISBN 9780446179966
Reviewed by Nikki Pringle for Reader Views (7/08)


“Close” is the story of the Brodie family of London, England. The family patriarch, Patrick, runs the gangs, hostess clubs and drug runners in and around the London streets. His wife, Lil, married him when she was 16, in part to get away from her miserable parents, and started producing babies almost immediately.  In between having children, she assisted her husband by running some of his girls and hostess clubs, and accepted, even seemed to enjoy, the violence that was part of their everyday lives until it was brought much too close to home.

After Patrick’s brutal murder, Lil is left out in the cold with five kids and no means of support. She begins selling herself to put food on the table and clothes on the kid’s backs. She takes up with the wrong kinds of men in an effort to find stability for her family.  As her children grow and she adds to her brood, her oldest two sons plot to take back what they feel is rightfully theirs as the children of the legendary Patrick Brodie. Using their father’s status, his old connections, and the reputations they have been building for themselves over time, Patrick Jr. and Lance avenge their father while taking over as the bread-winners for their younger brothers and sisters and their mother.

Martina Cole is a best-selling author in the UK and I had hoped she would be on par with other UK crossovers like J.K. Rowling and Jeffery Archer, but for me, this book was the first and last reading of Cole that I will.  I found the execution of the plot incredibly repetitive, overly and unnecessarily vulgar and violent, and just plain dull. The storyline jumped repeatedly over periods of time ranging from a few months to 20 years with nothing to fill readers in on what transpired during these gaps of time. Some of the characters and storylines were superfluous and befuddled the already murky storyline even more. Instead of telling of an incident once and being succinct, precise and well-written, the events are dragged out over multiple pages and retold by different characters but the wording and feeling of the scene are almost identical. 

The bug “twist” involving Lance was as plain as the nose on your face almost from the beginning of the story. It would have been interesting had it not been so predictable. I felt that none of the characters were given enough of an individual personality. They all seem to speak and act in the same manner regardless of race, gender or social standing. Overall, “Close” is not a book I would recommend to anyone, other than readers who have enjoyed Cole’s past novels and want to go ahead and try to get through this one too.

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