Nick Sharman 18
My version: Hardback
Genre: Fiction, thriller
Publisher: No Exit Press
First published: 2010
ISBN: 978-1-84243-328-7
Pages: 256
Bought
From the cover:
Could this be the end for Sarman?
For seven years, ex-cop Nick Sharman has lived in ‘exile’ on a Caribbean island with no UK extradition treaty – his life of luxury funded by the proceeds of a bank robbery where he was the last man standing. Then a phone call out of the blue from London changes everything. The voice from the past belongs to the only woman that he loves, his daughter Judith. Like father, like daughter, she’s a police officer, but the family resemblance doesn’t stop there – Judith is in big trouble with the law, and has no one to turn to except her father.
Returning under an assumed name to a bleak mid-winter England, Nick finds things have changed, and so has he. He’s grown older, but perhaps no wiser and his once beloved London is moving too fast for him. Vowing to clear his daughter’s name by any means necessary, Sharman becomes enmeshed with blackmailers, murderers, the security services, and Russian gangsters all baying for his blood – until he, Judith, and his old sparring partner Jack Robber, take on all-comers in a dramatic finale on the mean streets of the capital.
Must be some fifteen to twenty years since I last picked up a Mark Timlin Nick Sharman thriller. And I still can’t put it down.
It’s hard for me to critiise a Mark Timlin/Nick Sharman book. They’ve always been right. They’ve always entertained, they’ve always been taughtly written and they’re amongst the very few books I decided I couldn’t leave the UK without, when I moved to Denmark in 2004. They’re all still on the bookshelf over there and they’re still amongst the books I recommend most frequently and the books I consciously – and I guess unconciously- compare all other crime-type thrillers against. And most are found wanting.
In Stay Another Day, our anti-hero Nick Sharman has been enjoying the simple life, as only people with a simply huge bank balance are able to, on an island in the (Caribbean) sun. Best not to enquire too closely where he got the money, just go along with that there’s plenty of it. One of the few people from his old life back in London who knows where he is and how to contact him, is his daughter and she suffenly gets in touch with a request for the kind of help only Nick Sharman can supply. Things go wrong, of course and Sharman finds that whilst he might have been out of circulation long enought to have lost some of his old sharpness, he hasn’t forgotten his old tricks, neither has he lost his old ability to attract trouble.
It has to be said that this isn’t classic Sharman – or Timlin. The plot isn’t good enough and it really doesn’t seem ike Timlin’s heart was in the project. There are weaknesses where I’m sure the Timlin of the ’80’s would have tightened up and made stronger. The end is obviously tacked on with a feeling of a rush to be done with the book and the character and to put the pen down. It was like visiting an old friend you lost contact with, or moved away from, and talking about how it used to be, back in the day. Nice enough while it lasts, but that’s where those memories really need to stay, back in their day.
Personally, I’d have liked a different ending – more uplifting, maybe. Sharman and for the pleasure he has given me down the years, deserved it. I’d have liked an ending that allowed us to decide what Sharman is maybe up to after all he’s been through in his life. But there we have it. It’s done. Timlin clearly feels he’s done and said all he wants to with Nick Sharman and I have got to thank him for it.
You can buy Stay Another Day by Mark Timlin from Amazon
Photo by Sara Groblechner on Unsplash
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