Martina Cole
| Martina Cole | |
|---|---|
| Born | Eilidh Martina Cole March 1959 (age 58) Essex, England |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | English |
| Ethnicity | Irish |
| Citizenship | British |
| Period | 1992–present |
| Genre | crime |
| Notable works | Dangerous Lady; The Runaway; The Take |
| Notable awards | Crime Writers Award |
| Children | 2 |
| Website | |
| www |
|
Martina Cole (born Eilidh Martina Cole, on 30 March 1959) is a British crime writer, businesswoman and occasional television presenter.
Cole was brought up in Aveley, Essex. As of 2015[update] she has released twenty two novels about crime, most of which examine London's gangster underworld. Four of her novels, Dangerous Lady, The Jump, The Take and The Runaway have been adapted into high-rating television dramas. She has achieved sales of over fourteen million in the UK alone and her tenth novel, The Know, spent seven weeks on The Sunday Times's hardback best-sellers list.
Cole was born in Essex to Irish Catholic parents, and was the youngest of five children. Her mother was a psychiatric nurse from Glasnevin, County Dublin and her father was a merchant seaman from Cork City. Her cousin is Cork politician Denis Cregan. She was expelled from her convent school aged 15 after allegedly being caught reading Harold Robbins' The Carpetbaggers.
She married for the first time aged 16, but the marriage only lasted a year. She had her first child, Christopher, at the age of 18.
Her parents both died when she was in her early 20s.
Prior to her literary success, Cole had a variety of low-paid jobs, including working as a cleaner, a wine waitress, an agency nurse and a supermarket shelf-stacker.
Cole's breakthrough came in 1991, when her manuscript for Dangerous Lady was accepted by the literary agent Darley Anderson and sold for a record £150,000. The book was published by Hodder Headline the following year and was an instant bestseller.
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