The Take

‘The truth, so they say, is good for the soul’ - Jimmy

Eight book reviews in and I convinced myself I can read serious full length novel with ease and at just over five hundred pages Martina Cole’s 2005 bestselling novel seemed just the fit. Although it took me well over a month to get to the end, Cole’s novel has you engaged in the criminal world of the Jackson family from the beginning.

After Freddie Jackson finishes a six year stint in prison he leaves with the wish of becoming a better criminal. Although simple in nature the story becomes much more than that as each family reacts and is affected differently by the life of crime. Despite the front cover which looks like it belongs to unsuccessful TV drama it is a well written crime novel that demonstrates the consequences of a life of crime.

Cole’s writing is very much similar to that of a TV script as after a page or so of one person’s perspective it changes to another in often a completely different setting. This is something I liked as it left me with many cliff-hangers which I think helped drive the plot and the various stories it consisted of. However, at times she rather changed from different perspectives, similar to an editor using too many jump cuts, though it could be this style that made the book easily adapted to the TV screen as it was in 2009.

 As she constantly changed perspectives Cole also repeated the personality traits of characters or their relationship with one another such as Jackie’s drinking. Even though the majority of the time when reading a book I need to go back a couple pages to go over something I’ve missed or misunderstood some sort of reminding about the characters she repeated details all too much rather than progress the story. I believe at least a hundred pages could be taken off and the book still would have done well because the story itself is good, really good.

I am quite glad that it took me a while to get through the novel as three books spanning over twenty years leaves a lot for the reader to digest as each characters rise and fall is documented while new ones come into the fold.

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