Mark Timlin – författare

A recently-discovered, long-lost novel and short stories from the 90s featuring private eye Nick SharmanFollow Sharman as he patrols his seedily glamorous South London beat, with its cast of villains, eccentrics, misfits and losers. A magnet for trouble, even when he is on holiday in the country, he has a habit of inadvertently ending up on the wrong side of the law and at the wrong end of a shotgun. In this high-risk world, people are seldom what they seem and nothing can be taken for granted.

A recently-discovered, long-lost novel and short stories from the 90s featuring private eye Nick SharmanFollow Sharman as he patrols his seedily glamorous South London beat, with its cast of villains, eccentrics, misfits and losers. A magnet for trouble, even when he is on holiday in the country, he has a habit of inadvertently ending up on the wrong side of the law and at the wrong end of a shotgun. In this high-risk world, people are seldom what they seem and nothing can be taken for granted.

The Fifth Nick Sharman ThrillerDisliked by Old Bill and villains alike, South London private eye Nick Sharman attracts trouble like the proverbial magnet.When businessman James Webb asks Sharman to find out who murdered his sister, her husband and two young children, the trail's been cold for over a year; the original police investigators had found nothing - no clues, no witnesses, no motive. There isn't much to go on. Besides, Sharman has other things to occupy him - his relationship with topless model Fiona is rapidly souring, his best friend Wanda is dying and his ex-wife leaves him to babysit their eleven-vear-old daughter, Judith.While Sharman's back is turned things start to hot up - he is followed, attacked and threatened with a shotgun on a busy road in broad daylight and the murder victims start to multiply. Then Judith is kidnaped by a gang of very nasty thugs. And Sharman finally loses his temper...

The Seventh Nick Sharman ThrillerLife as a private detective has proved too much for Nick Sharman, and when a chance run-in with a couple of young thugs secures him a job as a part-time barman, it looks as if he's found a promising new occupation.Unfortunately the drug squad has other plans. With two coppers slaughtered in as many weeks, Sharman finds himself being coerced into helping track down the killers.All too soon he is working alongside a pony-tailed Detective Sergeant with unexpected sexual tastes, and consorting even more closely with a beautiful high-class whore who likes to be spanked... never mind some dangerously unpredictable big-spending villains.The perils of playing pig-in-the-middle certainly add excitement to life, but Sharman is now mixing with some very bad company, and even he cannot predict the scale of the bloodbath that will follow.

The Seventh Nick Sharman ThrillerLife as a private detective has proved too much for Nick Sharman, and when a chance run-in with a couple of young thugs secures him a job as a part-time barman, it looks as if he's found a promising new occupation.Unfortunately the drug squad has other plans. With two coppers slaughtered in as many weeks, Sharman finds himself being coerced into helping track down the killers.All too soon he is working alongside a pony-tailed Detective Sergeant with unexpected sexual tastes, and consorting even more closely with a beautiful high-class whore who likes to be spanked... never mind some dangerously unpredictable big-spending villains.The perils of playing pig-in-the-middle certainly add excitement to life, but Sharman is now mixing with some very bad company, and even he cannot predict the scale of the bloodbath that will follow.

When a police officer's daughter was found raped and murdered, Sailor Grant, the local nonce, was sent down. Sharman always had his doubts, but that part of his life is over.Now, Sailor is out of prison and keeps phoning Sharman to help him get justice, but Nick wants to be left alone. When Sailor is found dead and Sharman is half beaten to death by the local coppers, Nick realises that he must find the truth about the events from his past before those close to him are killed.

Harry Stonehouse had been a cop, a good one - and straight, unlike Nick Sharman. After taking early retirement he'd landed a job at a security firm. Now he's dead, and his wife wants Nick to find out who killed him and why.Nick's been taking a close look at hell recently and doesn't care too much about anything beyond the next Jack Daniel's. But Harry had been a friend, and Nick had screwed his wife and he feels sorry for her. Big mistake.In an unlikely partnership with ex-DI Robber, escaping from resentful retirement at his sister's, Sharman sets off in pursuit - and finds himself swept along in the deadly aftermath of a £20 million heist. And with that much money at stake, betrayal, double-crossing and murder are just for starters...

Sharman's Christmas with his daughter Judith starts with the worst of gifts: news that his ex-wife, Laura, her new husband and their baby son have been killed in a bomb explosion on a plane.Sharman and Judith seek what little consolation they can from each other, but she instinctively knows that Sharman needs to take his mind off things. Pushed by her, he accepts a seemingly straightforward, if unlovely job babysitting a big-time American dealer who is in custody but doing one last deal - only this time on the right side of the law.But when Sharman's around, babysitting is one step away from carnage and disaster; wanted by the police, he turns for help from the most unlikely of sources - the Yardie gangs that infest the estates of 'sarf London'. What begins as work turns to vengeance for his ex-wife's murder and battle to save the innocence - and life - of his daughter.

Family trouble! Growing old quietly was never really an option for Nick Sharman. When he takes on a job for a prosperous Manchester businessman looking for his runaway teenage daughter, Meena, he should, perhaps, have known better. He finds himself in a race against time to save he girl from the kind of trouble that gives families a bad name. Trying to do the right thing, Nick swaps sides and ends up starring in his own version of a Straw Dogs shoot out with family and friends, where nobody comes out the winner.

Spanning 40 years of love, life, and villainy, this epic novel is a major tour de force from an author at the peak of his powers, the Spillane of Brit Noir

 

Once upon a time in south London, three young men without a future decide to invent their own. The sixties are starting to swing and Jimmy, John, and Billy want it all: the clothes, the pills, the music, and the women. Through drugs, protection, and armed robbery, they start building their crime empire; everything they''ve always dreamed about is within their grasp. But then Billy changes sides and becomes a cop—and finds that his days are numbered. Now, decades later, Billy''s son, Mark, is working for John Jenner and waiting for the day when his father''s killer gets out of prison. It''s any time now and Mark is determined to be there when the doors swing open.

The Fourth Nick Sharman ThrillerNick Sharman is in traction, hospitalised for four months, and desperate for a distraction. Then Fiona arrives - a topless model for the tabloids who bullies him into convalescing in her flat in Camberwell...After his last disaster-ridden case, Sharman has promised himself a quiet life. What he gets - almost the minute his leg is out of the plaster - is more trouble. Emerald Watkins, king of a black south London 'firm', has received a tip-off that he's about to be arrested after a large stash of cocaine is found in one of his lock-ups. He wants Sharman to help his nephew Teddy find out who's stitched him up.As Sharman roams the urban mayhem of South London in search of his mystery man, he is in turn bribed, shot at and set up for a particularly gruesome murder... All in a night's work.