Mark Timlin Knihy

Nick Sharman is living a life of married bliss with his new partner Dawn. The bad boy has settled down - unlike his ex-wife Laura. Laura's quite capable of shattering the idyll, but this time it's serious; their fifteen-year-old daughter Judith has gone missing. The police are looking, but have no leads. Laura fears the worst. Sharman still has his own skills. But Laura's call catapults him back into a world he should have left behind. And when he decides to right some wrongs in his own way, domestic bliss becomes a thing of the past.

Nick 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 find who stiched him up.

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 Daniels. 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.

Life 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.

Poor old Nick Sharman may be dead and gone, but there s still life left in the old dog yet as Mark Timlin shows in this collection of stories about his memorable detective.Follow Sharman as he rocks through the underworld of 90s London and beyond with more than a helping hand from his old mate Detective Inspector Robber, both men still sharp as a pair of tacks.There's murder, mayhem and maybe a few laughs on the way plus an interesting soundtrack...'It is possible that South London contains some law abiding citizens in conventional relationships but they make no appearance in Timlin's immoral, wildly enjoyable books' - Times

It starts when Nick Sharman notices a young and beautiful woman shoplifting in a nice West End store. In a moment of gallantry, Sharman saves her from the indignity of being caught. The next thing he knows Elizabeth Pike is his client. One evening a few weeks before, her father, multimillionaire Sir Robert Pike, took his old service revolver and blew a hole in his head. Now the battle is on for control of his massive media empire. And someone is out to get his illegitimate daughter Catherine, a lovely young Australian with a past. Nick has two women to protect. But from who?

Nick Sharman is nobody's favourite person. Ex-cop, ex-doper, invalided out of the Met after a stray bullet in the foot saved him from an investigation into the missing evidence from a drugs haul. The cops don't like him. The villains don't like him. Sharman is unemployable. So he's hired himself an office and set up shop as a private...

Originally published: Answers from the grave. London: Do-Not-Press, 2004.