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.

The Know is the first novel I have read by Martina Cole. I found the violent scenes difficult to read, but realise that in the seedy world the Brewers live in violence would be the norm. Cole has tackled a few dificult subjects very well - drug dealing, prostitution, peadophillia. She particularly depicts the emotions and humanity of the main characters very well. Having found the book emotionally exhausting I will read something more lighthearted before I read another of Cole\'s novels.