Publication Order of Maura Ryan Books
| Dangerous Lady | 1992 |
| Maura’s Game | 2002 |
Publication Order of DI Kate Burrows Books
| The Ladykiller | 1993 |
| Broken | 2000 |
| Hard Girls | 2009 |
| Damaged | 2017 |
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| Goodnight Lady | 1994 |
| The Jump | 1995 |
| The Runaway | 1997 |
| Two Women | 1999 |
| Faceless | 2001 |
| The Know | 2003 |
| The Graft | 2004 |
| The Take | 2005 |
| Close | 2006 |
| Faces | 2007 |
| The Business | 2008 |
| The Family | 2010 |
| The Faithless | 2011 |
| The Life | 2012 |
| Revenge | 2013 |
| The Good Life | 2014 |
| Get Even | 2015 |
| Betrayal | 2016 |
| No Mercy | 2019 |
| Loyalty (With: Jacqui Rose) | 2023 |
| Guilty (With: Jacqui Rose) | 2024 |
| No Regret (With: Jacqui Rose) | 2025 |
| The Stretch | 2026 |
About Martina Cole
Martina Cole is a British crime writer, born in Essex on 30 March 1959, whose novels are mostly set in London’s gangland underworld. Her first book, “Dangerous Lady”, was published in 1992, and four of her novels have been adapted for television, including “The Take” and “The Runaway”.
Cole was the youngest of five children born to Irish Catholic parents: her mother was a psychiatric nurse from Dublin and her father a merchant seaman from Cork. She was expelled from her convent school at 15 and had her first child at 18. Before she was published she worked as a cleaner, a wine waitress, an agency nurse and a supermarket shelf-stacker.
Her breakthrough came in 1991, when the literary agent Darley Anderson accepted the manuscript of “Dangerous Lady” and it sold for a then record £150,000. Headline published it the following year. Its heroine is Maura Ryan, a queen of gangland London, and Cole returned to her in “Maura’s Game” (2002). Most of her novels have a female protagonist or antihero, and several are set within the Irish community in and around London. “The Ladykiller” (1993) began a second series, featuring the detective Kate Burrows.
ITV broadcast four-part adaptations of “Dangerous Lady” in 1995 and “The Jump” in 1998. Sky1 serialised “The Take” in 2009, with Tom Hardy as Freddie, and “The Runaway” in 2011. “Two Women”, “The Graft” and “Dangerous Lady” have all been staged at the Theatre Royal Stratford East. Cole also presented the ITV3 documentary series “Martina Cole’s Lady Killers”, about female serial killers.
According to her publisher, her books have sold thirteen million copies and more than a dozen have been No. 1 bestsellers. The Crime Writers’ Association awarded her the Diamond Dagger in 2021. She holds creative writing classes in prisons and is a patron of the charities Gingerbread and Women’s Aid.
After “No Mercy” (2019), Cole’s next three novels, “Loyalty”, “Guilty” and “No Regret”, were written with Jacqui Rose, a collaboration her publisher attributed to health reasons. “The Stretch”, published in October 2026, is her first solo novel since 2019.