I am reviewing the gangster thriller The Faithless by Martina Cole which is an excellent novel that I bought from a car boot sale. This book was published in 2011 and topped the British Book Chart for 6 weeks. It is also around 520 pages so a pretty substantial length. I think it is one of Martina’s better novels. The plot is there is a young married lady called Cynthia who is a bit controlling of her husband. She has a sister called Celeste and they don’t get on and later on she has an affair with Celeste’s husband. Anyway Cynthia’s husband loves her dearly and even turns to being a gangster to give her the lifestyle she wants. He shoots a drug dealer and has to eliminate his business partner in the process of getting to the top. He starts laundering money and also has women working for him in brothels and buying the properties for this are part of the laundering scam. Anyway after the affair he leaves her and later Celeste commits suicide. Cynthia’s children have to live with their grandparents. Her daughter later on also starts a relationship with someone who turns to being a gangster and doing bank robberies. Of course he does get picked up for some of these offences and does time in jail. Cynthia finds she gets on with her granddaughter who starts living with her. Although the book starts and ends with Cynthia’s murder by her daughter it does have a happy outcome. Cynthia has schemed and manipulated everyone around her perhaps not in a altogether believeable way although I am sure a lot of this kind of thing goes on. The daughter just snapped and had enough of the mother although she had also got a drug problem and the mother had been raising the granddaughter. It is set in and around London and is set from 1984 to close to the present day. It starts with Cynthia as a young attractive lady. I did thoroughly enjoy this book and would definitely recommend it. Martina is one of the most popular British authors who was a single mother herself and spent many years on a rough London council estate which inspires her novels. She has worked in a variety of jobs including bar maid so has probably seen a lot of things happen.
