Have a picture of Martina Cole, The Know?, please send it to us.
| Value for Money | 8.3/10  |
|---|---|
| Overall rating | 7/10 |
By bel27 on 16th Apr 2007
| Format | Paperback |
|---|---|
| Value for money | 7/10 |
| Overall value | 4/10 |
 bel27's recommendation | |
Cole knows what makes a good story. 'The Know' has an exciting plotline and rattles along at a fair old pace. But her writing style is full of cliche, and this makes many of her scenes less powerful than they should be - you get the feeling that you've heard it all before. This is particularly the case when she is trying to give us a sense of how brutal many of her male characters are: in fact, she ends up giving us a series of familiar stereotypes who lose their menace because they seem to be reading from a script cobbled together from episodes of 'The Sweeney' and 'The Professionals'. Some characters - particularly Paulie - suffer from inconsistent characterisation, but others, such as Jon Jon, are more successful and show that Cole can do it when she sets her mind to it. Too much of this novel, however, feels lazy and as if it is written on auto-pilot. Like a Pot Noodle, it is sort of good while it lasts, but leaves you empty and wondering whether there isn't in fact something better out there. There is, but it's not written by Cole.
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