Mark Timlin is a British author best known for his series of novels featuring Nick Sharman, a former Metropolitan Police officer who takes up the profession of private investigator in South London. He is also a renowned book reviewer and literary commentator. His most recent work is REAP THE WHIRLWIND. In his early years he did various jobs including work as a member of the road crew for THE WHO, including working backstage at Woodstock in the 1960s on the lighting cranes
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Three couples. Modern as hell. Eve and Luke, Melissa and Paul, Grace and Martin. The first two pairs live in affluent, leafy Dulwich, south London. The last pair on the thirteenth floor of a council block close by. Not well off at all. But Martin once won the Booker prize, so he’s a big-time celebrity to the others. But all three couples harbour secrets of the kind that could break them if they came out.
Then there’s children. Loads. Thing is, one child in each family is dyslexic, and Eve has taken courses to teach the problem. So, possibly against all odds, the families must bond together. But, something’s off. Something doesn’t ring true about the forced friendships, and something is obviously going to go wrong. And if course it does.
As spring turns to summer, the children run wild in the massive garden of Eve and Luke’s house, like the boys in The Lord Of The Flies, that Izzy, Melissa’s thirteen, going on forty year old, daughter, brings to the lessons. Friendships form and break, like ice on a pond, and like a pond, the depths can be treacherous.
Then, at Eve’s behest, the families all gather together in her villa in Greece for a holiday, and, together in a foreign country under a burning sky, things start to fester and crack. Later, back in London, the worst thing that can happen, happens to one of the families. But wait. Worse is yet to come.
This is a jittery little opus, all jagged moods and tempers. Jealousy, lust, or possibly lust followed by jealousy, the whole nine yards. Enjoyable? Yes, if you like watching car crashes, and I must confess, guiltily, that I do.
Half crime novel, half Aga saga, half Gothic tragedy. And I know that’s three halves. Never mind. It feels bigger than its parts. This one will keep you pinned to the story and it’s grizzly end like butterfly in a case.
