ROMEO'S TUNE

A reprint of the second Nick Sharman book, from London's answer to Elmore Leonard.

When you're an ex-cop and an ex-doper scratching a living as a private investigator in the unromantic streets of south London, you take any work you can get, even a dreary little debt collection job for some toe-rag of a used-car dealer. When Nick Sharman collects the money due on a classic Bentley, he finds himself stepping into another world, a world where a reclusive rock musician in a secluded mansion complete with its own recording studio—and firing range—broods on the royalties stolen from him by a crooked manager—and decides Sharman is just the guy to get them back. Taking the job could be the worst mistake of Sharman's disaster ridden life. And when rock 'n' roll's godfathers take on the Mafia, south London explodes in a maelstrom of violence. Timlin writes very groovy hard-boiled British crime with vintage flavor — because it is vintage now. It's terrific writing. Mark Timlin is the author of more than 30 novels, including All the Empty Places, Answers from the Grave, Guns of Brixton, and Stay Another Day, as well as Gangsters’ Wives and Lipstick Killers under the pseudonym Lee Martin. His Nick Sharman novels were made into a television series starring Clive Owen.