The Take
By Martina Cole,
Headline, ? 11.99

I love hard-boiled underworld novels, especially of the American variety. Hitmen and Scotland Yard novels in British fiction excite me nonetheless. They are fast-paced, gripping and fraught with vicarious danger.

Imagine my thrill when I picked up a copy of The Take ? supposed to be a gritty novel about the London underworld. ?Dark and dangerous?, read a blurb on the cover. ?Intensely readable?, read another. I opened the book with a sense of anticipation. But I was in for a huge disappointment.

Freddie Jackson is a small-time hood. When he lands in prison, he feels that it is his chance to finally make it big in the criminal netherworld. In prison, Freddie makes all the right connections. And when he gets out, Freddie believes he is now a big-time criminal ? London?s version of a Corleone.

When your protagonist is a foul-mouthed, obnoxious creep, reading the novel makes for heavy weather. Freddie beats his wife, plays fast and loose with the girls and rapes his cousin?s fianc?e. Reading it is an ordeal, indeed.

Freddie?s wife, Jackie, is a big, blowsy blonde. She wants her husband home, for as she declares, she craves the lusty libido of her man. Yet, she is becoming bitter, resentful, and increasingly unstable. Slowly and irrevocably, Jackie?s world crumbles around her.

Jackie?s younger sister, Maggie, is in love with Jimmy, who is also Freddie?s cousin. She is beautiful, young ? everything Jackie is not. Jimmy Jackson is a hood in the making who hero-worships Freddie and copies all his moves, hoping to become as big a crook and bad guy as Freddie.

Crime families may not pray together, but if this novel is anything to go by, they do stick together. However, behind closed doors, jealousy and betrayal are waiting to rear their ugly heads. At last, the famous familial bonds of the Jacksons are broken and internecine conflict is the order of the day, because, as the blurb says, ?in their world you can trust no one, in their world everyone is on the take?.

My personal beef with Martina Cole is about a particularly sordid rape scene. It is perhaps the most bile-churning piece of writing I have read in a long while, described in brutal detail and played out over three pages which begin to resemble a sewer.

The Take is not an action novel. It is more about the psychological and emotional workings of the criminal mind. It is a raw and sordid look at a crime family in contemporary London. To reading the book is to be overwhelmed by a wave of negativity. If you are a criminologist, maybe you will like this novel.