Hard Knocks by
Zoe Sharp
pbk out February 04
(Piatkus)
at £6.99
…….. and never was a novel more aptly named!
Ex-soldier Charlie Fox's flat has been damaged by fire so that, reluctantly, she has little
choice but to spend Christmas with her parents. From there she is summoned to the
funeral of an old army acquaintance Kirk Salter, which she attends equally reluctantly;
after the funeral her ex-boss and ex-lover Sean Meyer asks her to go undercover at the
training school in Germany where Salter (himself undercover there) died. Despite the large
amount of emotional baggage Charlie is carrying where both Sean and Salter are
concerned, she agrees to take on the task.
The school, managed by a Major Gilby and staffed by some very tough cookies indeed,
runs courses for aspiring personal bodyguards. It becomes clear that not only some of the
staff but also some of the trainees have their own agendas, and among so many tough
unscrupulous people it is not easy for either Charlie or the reader to sort out who is on the
right side – and one wouldn't necessarily want to meet even the ones who are on the side
of the angels. Charlie has a watching, observing brief, but is generally not entirely sure
exactly what she is observing – for example, could the school be a front for a sub-
contracted kidnapping business, fronted by the vicious Russian Gregor Venko? Charlie is
in phone contact with Sean and in between business calls they start to get their personal
relationship sorted out. It's Charlie who forces a showdown in the action and when Sean
appears in person, a showdown in their relationship.
Charlie, already recovering from previous injuries, receives many of the hard knocks of the
title. The danger she is in forces her, to her dismay, to unlock her own unscrupulous side;
on the occasion when she unnecessarily goes a blow too far and almost kills a man, she
regrets this deeply. All the action is nail-bitingly well described, and as the plot develops it
is clear that this would make an excellent film. This is Charlie's third outing on the printed
page – may she survive all the hard knocks her author throws at her to make many more.
Hard Knocks by
Zoe Sharp
