MARTINA Cole's books fly off the shelves in towns like Bolton mostly because "they're about characters that people recognise."

Take this as you will. Her plotlines are about the rag-end of life -- prostitutes, drug dealers, murderers and child abusers.

But this is plainly what fascinates people all over the country because all her books have been best-sellers. In October she celebrates 10 years of writing.

And when Martina visits Sweetens Bookshop and Bolton Central Library on Tuesday, May 28, she knows that she will, equally, greet a cross-section of fans.

"I was at one book-signing in London and this big Rastafarian guy came in, waltzed right past the queue and insisted on seeing me straight away because he had a black cab waiting outside," she explains in a chat from her Essex home.

"He said he had come straight over from 'funky Brixton.' He was a big fan and wanted to meet me. He kissed my hand and left."

A great, gravelly guffaw greets this memory -- a laugh that is a legacy from too many cigarettes, late nights and hard times.

Martina is financially comfortable these days but it was not always like that.

She was born and brought up in Aveley, Essex, in a staunchly Irish Catholic family, the youngest of five children.

She hated her convent school, played truant all the time and left without any qualifications. But, while the other kids would bunk off school to the shops, young Martina could be found in the park with a book.

Her mother was a strong influence in her life, she recalls, and discussed matters of the day with her family.

Unfortunately, all of this did not prevent an 18-year-old Martina becoming pregnant -- and alone.

With her young son, Christopher, she lived in a carpetless council flat in Tilbury, regularly running three jobs at a time to pay the bills.

As a hard-up single mum with no money for socialising, she turned to writing to keep herself entertained after she put her son to bed each night.

When she married in her early 20s, she continued to write in her spare time. But she was 30 before she decided to devote herself to writing -- and in spite of friends who insisted that "working-class people like us don't write books."

She bought an electric typewriter and gave herself a year to make her mark. She had already started working on the manuscript of her first novel Dangerous Lady years before and it took her 18 months to complete it.

The book was an instant hit, combining the gritty realism of everyday lowlife with a cracking storyline.

Dangerous Lady and a later novel, The Jump, were also both snapped up by TV and made into series, finding a whole new audience for Martina's books.

They are not a comfortable read but they are totally unputdownable-- a description which also applies to the new paperback of her latest smash, Faceless.

She reads widely "anything I can get my hands on", and gets her inspiration from real life.

"I see something in a newspaper that says Woman's Body Found, for instance, and I add to the story myself.

"But," she says, "sometimes I don't have to make the stuff up. I never cease to be surprised by the way human beings treat each other."

Even though her life is now a million miles from that Tilbury flat, Martina doesn't shelter herself from real life.

When filming The Jump at Wandsworth Prison, one of the prison officers asked her to come back and talk to some of the "lifers" who were keen on writing.

She did and so started creative writing workshops for inmates at Wandsworth and Belmarsh prisons.

She also makes regular visits to Holloway and Bulwood Hall women's prisons, and is patron of Chelmsford's Women's Aid.

"Some of my best fans are in prison," she says without a trace of irony. Currently, she is five weeks' late on finishing her next novel, Maura's Game, which continues where Dangerous Lady left off.

"So many people wanted to know what happened to Maura Ryan at the end of that book that I felt I had to go back to her," says Martina.

She starts a gruelling national tour promoting Faceless today which starts in Edinburgh and finishes in Leicester in three weeks' time.

This means leaving her 4- year-old daughter Freddie Mary at home, which Martina naturally doesn't like to do.

They will, however, talk regularly on the phone. And Martina insists that being a mum this time around is "a total delight".

But touring also has its advantages and Martina loves to meet her fans.

After all, they offer so many more potential plotlines to unravel -- "Did you read that strange story about the man who tried to kill his wife in the garage . . .?"

Tickets for Martina's visit to Bolton are free, available from Bolton Library and Sweeten's Bookshop in Deansgate. Faceless by Martina Cole is published by headline at £6.99.