RARA-AVIS: Re: Another hardboiled female author?

From: Curt Purcell (curtpurcell@hotmail.com)
Date: 11 Feb 2009

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    --- In rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "Max Gilbert" <jmaxgilbert@...> wrote:
    > I recently watched the British mini-series based on Martina Cole's
    > DANGEROUS LADY and found a very enjoyable production with a welldrawn,
    > hardboiled female protagonist. I haven't read the book though or any
    > of her others, most of which haven't been published in the US. Has
    > anyone read her work and, if so, would you consider her hardboiled?

    I'm actually just getting ready to read this, along with Cole's TWO WOMEN and a couple other hardboiled Brit female authors supposedly inspired by Cole (or at least compared to her on the covers of their books)--Jessie Keane's DIRTY GAME and Gilda O'Neill's PLAYING AROUND.

    I popped in to see if Cole had been discussed here before. I guess not, since Max's unanswered question was just about the only thing that turned up in the search results, except for this gem, posted by Donna in message 2385:

    'While I like noir and bizarre and dark and outrageous and in-your-face, my Mum prefers vicars and tea parties, twitching net curtains and poisonings that get solved by monks or elderly ladies or cats. She once tried a Martina Cole (it turned out to be The Ladykiller) and rang me up whispering (god alone knows why she felt the need to whisper, she was sitting in her own living room at the time) to tell me she'd just read part of a pornographic book, and she was shocked. "It had 'lady' in the title, but they weren't, dear."'

    All of that was several years ago. So, anyone read Martina Cole in the meantime?



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