Hearts of Stone: The hard-boiled stories of a South London Private Eye

By Mark Timlin

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 who likes to be spanked... never mind some dangerously unpredictable big-spending villains.

The perils of playing pig-in-the-middle certainly add excitement to life, but Sharman is now mixing with some very bad company, and even he cannot predict the scale of the bloodbath that will follow.

'Hard-boiled story-telling with attitude' - Daily Mail

• Language: English
• Publisher: No Exit Press
• Release date: Jan 29, 2015
• ISBN: 9781843444770

Mark Timlin

In over twenty years as an author, Mark Timlin has written some thirty novels under many different names, including best selling books as Lee Martin, innumerable short stories, an anthology and numerous articles on diverse subjects for various newspapers and magazines.

Reviews for Hearts of Stone

[runner56_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A superior second world war book based around the Greek resistance on the idyllic Ionian island of Lefkas. It is a story about love, friendship, war, and treachery and brilliantly portrays how the Nazi regime attempted to subjugate all those who opposed it's so called Reich doctrine. I enjoyed the authors style of storytelling by introducing us to an aged Eleni Thesskoudis and through her eyes revealing the courage and sacrifice of the Greek resistance as first the Italians and then the Germans attempted to crush all opposition to its vision of a new world order..."Perhaps war was the real face of humanity, and peace was little more than a pretence of what human nature could be."...."They were lying in wait to slaughter their enemy, or be killed in turn. Against that reality what did their feelings matter? Feelings had no place in this setting, this moment." This is the second Simon Scarrow book I have recently read and it certainly does not disappoint.

[blodeuedd_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The story is told in the present and in the past.

In 1938 three teens meet and enjoy life. Eleni, Andreas and Peter.

In the present Anna meets an descendant of Peter who wants to meet her grandmother Eleni. Not something Eleni wants, but instead she tells her story to Anna. Though I must say, it was not really Eleni's story we get, it is Andreas' story. Quite the shame, cos yes his story is good, but Eleni's would have been so different.

Ok, back to the past. The war starts. Italians and later Germans invade Greece. Andreas goes off to fight. Eleni stays at home, and Peter who knows Greek and the island will later be sent there. They will all meet again. And we all know that wont be pretty.

It's war. There is hate. There is struggle. They all want to fight for their country, even if their country is not always making the right choices.

But there is more. Peter was on the island with his father who was an archaeologist. And later Germans come back to find that which was not found, or was it? And to take it.

I do not think I have read a book set in Greece during WWII before. I liked the mix of war and the hunt for that which was hidden. It was also sad to see how the anger still lingered on. Still, more of Elenis' story would have been nice, but that would have made the book too big. Not to mention to see how Peter fared before he came there.