Dysfunction: All in the family

Martina Cole's The Runaway centres on a doomed romance, in sleazy, gritty 60s and 70s London. It was adapted for television this year. Photo / Supplied

Martina Cole’s crime novels explore the extremes of relationship dysfunction. She talks to Stephen Jewell about her fascination with the darker, and tougher, side of human nature.

You don't have to spend much time with Martina Cole to realise that family is not just an important theme in her best-selling crime stories but also a significant part of her life.

The 52-year-old lives in a spacious 16th century house in rural Kent on the south-eastern outskirts of London with her 13-year-old daughter, Freddie, while her 34-year-old son, Chris, who also acts as her manager, lives nearby with his wife and children. After my taxi drops me off, I'm initially confused since, in the great English tradition, her home doesn't have a number but a name. But after beckoning me in with a friendly wave, we settle down in her kitchen with tea and biscuits to chat about her latest novel, The Faithless, which, like last year's The Family, centres around a band of ruthlessly duplicitous relatives who are constantly and often literally at each other's throats.

"The thing about The Family is that it was about that particular family and how dangerous families can be," she says. "I often have very dysfunctional families in my books. They either function really well or they don't function at all. It depends on what the book is about. The Faithless was about a woman, Cynthia. She doesn't see it in herself, but she'll destroy anyone around her to get what she wants. She's selfish. There are a lot of people out there, who are just like that, although they're maybe not as overt as Cynthia. But quite a few people set out with an agenda and her agenda is to get whatever she wants."

Indeed the term "mafia" originally referred to a form of silent brotherhood. "A lot of crime over the years has been committed by particular families and you only have to go to east or north London, Hell's Kitchen in New York or Melbourne to see that," says Cole, who expresses admiration for David Michod's recent film, Animal Kingdom, inspired by the murderous real life exploits of the Victorian capital's notorious Pettingill family. "It generally tends to be down to families. Like all my books, this book is set in the crime world but Cynthia is on her own; she stands alone. Normally my protagonists do things for their families but she'll destroy her family to get what she wants."

Wed to the weak but devoted Jimmy, Cynthia Tailor is consumed by her resentment of her younger sister, Celeste, whose handsome husband, Jonny Parker, is higher up in the family-organised crime network. "When you're young, no sisters really get on and that's the same with female friends," says Cole. "They argue all the time. It's the same with men, it's just that men don't admit it so much. In my family, there were five of us but my brothers and sisters were a lot older than me. I didn't really know them, to be honest, until I got older because my mum was 49 when I was born and by the time I was 6 or 7, they'd married and left home."

As Cynthia's fractious relationship with her own daughter Gabriella shows, mothers don't always want the best for their offspring. "That's a fallacy," says Cole. "I loved my mum and I adored her but I didn't always like her. That's the honest part of it all. You don't always like your parents but you love them. I think Gabbie desperately wanted to love her mum; she really did, because against all the odds she was a nice person. But it got harder and harder as time went on. A lot of people want validation from their parents and parents who don't encourage you much can make people want to achieve things even more."

Opening in 2009, the novel begins with Gabriella brutally bashing her mother to death before flashing back to 1984. "I always do that," laughs Cole. "In the prologue of my book, I always tell you what happens, which is against everything you're supposed to do in a book. I give you a big event in the prologue and then you've got to read the rest of it to find out how that came to be. Someone I know read the proof of The Faithless and they rang me up and said 'oh, Tina, I'm the most anti-violent person in the whole world but when she killed Cynthia for the second time at the end of the book, I was rooting for her. I could have done it myself and I'm not sure that I wouldn't have done it sooner!' In Gabby, you're dealing with someone who grew up in the shadow of such an enormous ego but at the end of the day, it's still your parent - and you honour your parents, don't you?"

Rather than crafting archetypal whodunnits, Cole is more concerned about what drives people to commit such heinous acts. "I like to write about why they do it and let people make up their own minds," she says. "Is it nurture over nature or nature over nurture? We never really know. Different circumstances affect people in different ways. A lot of people who are caught up in terrorist activities adopt that stiff upper lip and get on with it while other people need hundreds of hours of therapy. It always amazes me that we went through two world wars in this country and everybody got back on track afterwards without millions of hours of in-depth analysis."

According to Cole, "get up and get on with it" is the best attitude to take. "Even the most traumatic things, people get over them," she says. "Not everyone, but the majority of people do. People lose children or their husband dies. The human psyche is geared up for that. The more people delve into why something happens, the more questions it brings up. I was in my early 20s when I lost my mum and dad and it was terrible. But you get yourself up and you go to work and sort yourself out because you have to. That comes across in my books. Big things happen to my people. 'Don't get even, get revenge' - that's obviously my female motto. The main hook that goes throughout the books is what we're all capable of in the right circumstances."

Unlike most mystery or thriller authors who base long-running series around a usually embittered but quick-witted detective, Cole doesn't pen what she calls cosy crime. "I love all that stuff, like Agatha Christie and I've had a policewoman Kate Burrows in four of my books," she says. "But I've always written from the point of view of the criminal, not the point of view of the police and even when I do that they're usually involved with criminals. There's a very fine line between the police and criminals. Years ago you'd get these old cop shows like The Sweeney and you'd see them fitting up people because they knew that they'd done robberies but couldn't prove it. But that meant that the person who did do the robbery is still out there. I've never understood the logic of that. The whole concept of our judicial system is 12 good men and true, and you don't take someone to court until you can prove that they did it."

Having published her first novel, Dangerous Lady, in 1982, Cole has always drawn from her own experience. "I had some friends who were up on an armed robbery charge and when they took them to the Old Bailey they had motorbike outriders and helicopters," she says. "I don't know but if I was in the jury, I'd think that these were dangerous men. My argument has always been let the punishment fit the crime. It's terrible to rob a bank but it's far worse to murder somebody. What has always got my goat in this country - and Australia, New Zealand and America are pretty much the same - is that property is worth more than people. If you rob a bank you get 20 to 30 years but if you knife or beat somebody to death with a baseball bat, you can be out in four to seven. Unless a judge says otherwise, life is seven years in this country. A lot of that comes across in my books."

She also counts infamous 60s gangster Eddie Richardson among her closest friends and persuaded him to write his acclaimed autobiography, The Last Word. "I write about what happens when you get caught up in the criminal world," she says. "A woman once said to me at Romford Market, 'you give me murder, mayhem, crime and prostitution in the comfort and safety of my own home', which I thought was a really good way to describe the books."

As a young author, Cole got one of her first breaks at the Essex market when stallholder Pat Fletcher offered to host an appearance. Despite selling more than 10 million books since, she has returned there every year to hold the first signing for her 18 books to date. "I'm a big believer in loyalty," she says. "I'm loyal to people and I expect people to be loyal back. I still have the same publisher and same agent, Darley Anderson, as when I first started. He's the nicest man in recorded history and we're still on a handshake 20 years later. We've never signed a contract and he gets 15 per cent. It should be four or eight but I've never argued with him."

Cole remains true to her word. Her son Chris arrives and we repair to the splendid 16th century gourmet pub next door, where we end up staying until late afternoon. "The roast rump of Kentish lamb is beautiful and, being a New Zealand boy, I thought you might like the lamb," laughs Cole, who ventures off on tangents about her daughter's love of the Rolling Stones' Paint It Black as conversation turns to Sky UK's recent adaptations of her 2005 novel The Take and 1997's The Runaway.

"They've not only got the money but because it's not terrestrial TV, it's a lot grittier," says Cole. She is full of praise for Inception actor Tom Hardy, who really embraced the lead role of former jailbird Freddie Jackson in The Take.

"He never tried to change him and played him exactly as I had written him," she says.

"He had his actions down and everything, so the man must have studied the book. Although he'd done Bronson and things like that, it put him on the map. For any up-and-coming actor, Freddie was a great part to play. If you look at most of the big actors who have come through lately, most of them end up playing a big lunatic or criminal type."

She was equally impressed by Alan Cumming's performance as flamboyant transvestite Desrae in The Runaway, which screened here earlier this year. "It was the first part he took in Britain for 10 years," says Cole. "I thought it was wonderful. He was on television in England and he said 'how lucky am I?' because he's an out-there homosexual and he fights homosexual and transsexual causes. He said, 'there's this great book where a transsexual is the main character'. He played it fantastically."

Next up is The Family, which will begin pre-production early next year. In the meantime, Cole is deep into her as-yet-untitled next book, which will focus more on the opposite sex.

"It's about men but it's also about the women in their lives," she says. "It starts with a big funeral with this young girl and her two older brothers, who are both in handcuffs. It's their mum who has died but you don't realise until the end of the prologue that it was a car bomb and it was really meant for their dad. I then take it back to when him and the brothers were close before they have a big falling out. As the book goes on, you have to work out who wanted shot of him.

"I can't tell you who it was because I don't want to give the game away."

The Faithless (Headline $37.99) is out now.