Abandoned To Their Fate (Broken - Martina Cole)

Member Name: shewhosmiles

Product:	Broken - Martina Cole
Date:	15/03/03 (188 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Gripping, Absorbing, Terrific read

Disadvantages: Harrowing subject

Based in Grantley a fictitious suburb of London East End, the story begins with a shocking and puzzling new case for Detective Inspector Kate Burrows.

Two year old Jamie is reported missing by his mother Regina. He is discovered on the top of a derelict building that is just about to be demolished. A description of the woman who abandoned him to his fate fits his mother.

18 month old Christian is dumped into the back of a garbage disposal truck by a woman and shortly afterwards Caroline reports her two young sons missing. Witnesses to the incident describe a woman who looks like Caroline. Her other young son Ivor is still missing.

The body of an unknown young boy is discovered on a rubbish tip. He hasn't been reported missing - doesn't anybody care?

More children go missing - more mothers are under suspicion. They all live on the same housing estate, they are all single parents and they all neglect their children in a matter of fact normal way of life to them.

Mickey Dougan is killed. Beaten to death in Girlie Girls, a lap-dancing club partly owned by Patrick Kelly. Patrick lives with Kate and has promised to go straight after years of being a hardman in London’s underworld. Kate doesn’t know about his partial ownership of the club and that he still maintains strong links with the criminal fraternities that could compromise her position in the police force. He knows that she will find out but Mickey was one of his men and murdered on his turf. Patrick needs to know why and how much of a threat the killing is to him despite the risk to his relationship.

Both stories run side by side and both are powerful in their own way. We have a story of gross neglect by young mothers towards their children. Young mothers who are heavily involved with drug taking and prostitution and are suspected of allowing their children to be used by paedophiles for monetary gain. Kate needs to solve the case quickly be
fore more children are harmed, but why do the mothers seem to be abandoning their children?

Patrick’s predicament gives us an insight into the intricacies of the London underworld and corruption at the highest level. We see the intense loyalty of his henchman of many years Willie Duggan, who is kidnapped and tortured. We see the fear of lesser criminals who get in the way of hoodlums who demand allegiance, but allegiance depends upon which hoodlum is the highest in the pecking order – or the most feared.

New kid on the block Boris the good-looking arrogant Russian is up and coming and totally ruthless. Along with his henchman Sergei they inspire fear into everybody who crosses their paths including Patrick and Willy. Boris wants Patricks turf but Patrick is most reluctant to let go.

That’s enough of the storyline. There are lots of twists and turns in this ambitious 660 page novel, certainly enough to keep me totally engrossed for days. I normally find anything about child abuse and paedophiles too upsetting and harrowing to enjoy reading about, but Martina treats the subject with care. We are told what is happening without too much graphic detail that would have marred the book for me. I learned just enough to make me want to read to the end to find out if the beasts got what they deserved.

It ends with a twist in the tale. I guessed what that might be but that in no way marred my enjoyment of the novel. Although Martina treated the subject of child abuse carefully my skin did crawl at times. One of the characters is a gross man called Lucas who deals in child prostitution and child pornography. I particularly wanted that horrendous beast to get his come uppance.

The main character Kate came across well. In her 40s she holds down a demanding and at times harrowing job. She could have been stereotyped as a tough clever female cop but we are shown a strong warm human side as she tries to hold herself toge
ther with problems in her domestic life at the same time as having a very difficult and emotive case to solve. Kate struggles to understand how anybody could harm a child and especially it’s own mother. I could empathise with that struggle and felt that it was portrayed well.

I felt a bit at odds with Patrick’s character. Although he is supposed to be going straight for the sake of his relationship with Kate he is prepared to kill to save face, knowing that he could lose the woman that he claims to love beyond anything. A warm side to him emerges when he is with Kate, but as a police officer with strong ethics her relationship with a villain causes her a great deal of emotional conflict.

I haven’t read anything from Martina Cole before but I found Broken to be one of the most compelling novels that I have ever read. Martina’s writing style is straightforward and easy to read without too many unnecessary flowery descriptions that can be boring to me. Right from the first page my interest was caught and I didn’t want to put the book down and had to force myself to stop reading when dawn was breaking and I needed to get some sleep before my next shift at work.

There is an unusually large number of diverse characters in this novel. Normally I would have lost track of who was who and have to keep looking back to find out, but I didn’t have that problem with Broken. I think that was because I became so intensely involved with the storylines that each character had his or her place for me and was memorable.

Broken is the follow up to Martina Cole’s previous novel The Ladykiller, the story of how Patrick and Kate meet and fall in love. My only regret is that I didn’t read The Ladykiller first, Broken is a fantastic compelling read that I can highly recommend.

Broken is available on Amazon for £5.59

Summary: