ALL HAIL THE NEW QUEEN OF THE BONKBUSTER

As she prepares to publish the final book in her one-million-selling trilogy, agent-turned-author Melanie Blake tells GARRY BUSHELL about her rags to riches success, Jilly Cooper's literary blessing... and the Bond Girl who helped her writing breakthrough

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AFTER the sad loss of national treasure Dame Jilly Cooper this month, Melanie Blake is the last “queen of the bonkbuster” standing. Or should that be the last one reclining in a luxurious fourposter bed with a come-hither smile playing around her pouting lips?

Cooper, Jackie Collins, and Shirley Conran have all gone, but relative new girl Melanie, with two Sunday Times Top Ten bestsellers under her Louis Vuitton belt, publishes the third instalment of her Falcon Bay trilogy, Vengeful Women, next month. Dame Jilly adored her writing, dubbing it, “Just like me but filthy — Melanie is carrying the torch for a new generation”.

“Jackie Collins’s daughters told me that she would have loved me too,” says Mel, 49. “I don’t know if the Queen has read my books, but she loved Jilly, so I suspect she’d lap them up.”

Blue-eyed blonde Blake isn’t sure about the bonkbuster label though. “I just heard a professor of female erotica tell Jeremy Vine the word is a misnomer, because these books are hard to write well.”

And when written well, they sell like ice cream in a heatwave. To date Melanie has sold one million books across all formats.

The agent-turned-novelist has proved remarkably prescient. Her 2022 book Guilty Women - the second in the trilogy - predicted the collapse of TV soaps years before Neighbours was cancelled.

Blake adapted her debut novel, 2018's The Thunder Girls about an all-woman pop group, into a hit stage musical featuring EastEnders's Carol Harrison, Coleen Nolan, and Coronation Street's Bev Callard.

When journalists asked why there was no sex in it, Melanie half-joked about writing something filthier.

It was Harrison who persuaded her to pen Ruthless Women. The first part of the trilogy sold a quarter of a million copies in the first month alone.