Martina Cole – The Family

The Murphy family are the most successful and feared gangsters in Southend. Lead by Philip Murphy they run many successful businesses and criminal activities. Philip takes care of his family and expects complete loyalty from all of them. He is devoted to his wife Christine but she has started to see a side of him that scares her and she feels powerless to do anything about it.

This was the first Martina Cole book I have read. I liked the sound of it as it seemed a little different for your normal crime books. The book opens with a present day scene which is a bit of a cliff-hanger so throughout the whole book you are aware that something is going to happen which is being built up to but don’t know what. After the opening section we then jump back in time to when Christine and Philip met and the book then continues chronologically to get back to the scene at the start of the book and its outcome.

I enjoyed the story and thought it was well paced in the most part. The characters were well formed and I feel we got to know them sufficiently although none of them were likeable and I struggled to have any sympathy for Chrristine. The book kept me interested throughout though and I was eager to find out what happened.

One thing I will note is that anyone who is adverse to swearing would perhaps want to stay clear of this book as there was a lot of it. I don’t have a problem with it personally and I think it was justified as those types of criminals would use that type of language but I know that if my mother in law picked up this book she would hate it because of the language used!