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
More info > http://wwwshotsmagcouk.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-return-of-nick-sharman.html
How would you feel if you had to give up your life in a heartbeat, with nothing but a couple of suitcases to show for your entire existence?
Zara Starling is fourteen years old when she sees two boys she knows kill a homeless man. She could just turn around and walk away. But she is a young woman with a conscience, so she calls the police and an ambulance, and agrees to give evidence at the boy’s murder trial. But the story she tells the detectives is not altogether true. What was deemed murder was in fact a case of self-defence, and the killers go back to the outside world.
But it doesn’t end there. Friends of the boys’ search for her identity, which is easily found in those pre-virus days, and look for revenge. And then, we discover, as the title goes, how to disappear. However, the unanswered question is: Why, when the boys are free, do the friends keep on pursuing Zara?
This is a sad one, as Zara’s extended family, mother, step-father, step-sister, starts to come unravelled as the repercussions of the lie she told come home to roost. If only she’d done the wise thing and closed her eyes to what she saw. But then there’d be no book which wouldn’t be a good thing. How To Disappear is tense, gripping, and tightly plotted, as the real reason for the search for Zara is revealed, and her stepfather’s mission to try and put things right only makes them worse, before a double, no, triple whammy of an ending that I didn’t see coming. I think this one will go far. A must read.
