The Hollow Man is the first of Harris's Nick Belsey series. Belsey is already deep in trouble when we meet him. He's up in front of Internal Inquiries and knows it's only a matter of time before he's sacked. He's basically filling in time when he gets the call about a missing person in The Bishops Avenue, one of select Hampstead's most exclusive addresses.
The misper is a reclusive Russian oligarch called Devereux. Even the maid has never set eyes on him. So Belsey does what we'd all do under the circumstances. He moves in and starts taking over Devereux's home, belongings and identity. If he can parlay the latter into, say, a hundred grand, he can quit Britain for somewhere warmer, with no extradition treaty.
But then a sniper assassinates an eighteen year-old girl in a local Starbucks, right in front of Belsey, who remains a good enough cop not to let such things pass. He gets drawn deeper when he realizes that the girl was an escort claiming to be in love with Devereux. There's also the complication that Belsey has found Devereux sitting in his own safe room at the house with his throat slashed open.
Belsey digs and uncovers conspiracies and cons involving international high finance, high stakes gambling in highly unusual locations, and high level corruption in the City Council. It's complicated, gripping, and occasionally comical. The characters leap off the page. The pace is incredible - and I'm reasonably sure this was Harris's debut. I've read the third Belsey novel and also the first of Harris's spy novels. He is different and extremely good. Thriller is a term used too easily. Oliver Harris is one of the few actually writing them right now.
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