The House of Fame - Oliver Harris

 I first stumbled across Oliver Harris by chance - I picked up, and was enthralled by, his spy novel, A Shadow Intelligence, last September (see my review below).   I said then I would be interested in his earlier Nick Belsey novels - and here we are with the third of them (out of four to date).   It was written in 2014 and seems oddly dated.   Not in style, content or pace, but nevertheless dated.   I suspect it is the sort of police corruption involved, the old-style heavy-handed fit-ups and sharing out the booty afterwards.   To my mind that's the Met circa 1980, the era of The Sweeney.   Nowadays the Met is corrupt by bending over backwards to the government of the day, beating up the weakest member of any protesting group, and - because the leadership is political and therefore weak - recruiting psychopaths and deviants and giving them guns.

Belsey's antagonist and former mentor, Geoff Bullseye McGovern, is the psychopath.   He recruited Nick to the dark side back in the day.   Nick is now suspended, under heavy investigarion, and squatting in a disused copshop in Hampstead (very contemporary).   An oldish lady bangs on the door, so confused she still thinks that's how to contact the forces of law and order.   Her thirty-something son has gone missing.   Nick has nothing better to do, so offers to help.   The son seems to be obsessed with media star Amber Knight, whose upcoming wedding is the talk of the tabloids.   Missing Mark Doughty seems to be a little too interested.

So Nick wanders the short distance from Mark's mum's council flat to Amber's mansion in Primrose Hill - and blunders into a crazed celebritiy cult in which dissenters are murdered.   Bullseye McGovern is the SIO.   Nick finds himself the chief suspect.

What really caught my eye was the way that Nick never tries to disguise who he really is.  He uses his real name, sometimes tells people that he's a cop facing serious jail time, other times let them go with their first assumptions.   He does much of his investiagting on his phone.   It's fascinating how skillfully Harris steers us through the madness.   And the ending is not only unexpected, it's sheer bloody brilliance.

So that's two series by Oliver Harris I am now obliged to pursue, the spy novels featuring Elliot Kane, and the other novels in the Belsey series.   It sounds like hard work but, hey, somebody's got to do it.

A Shadow Intelligence - Oliver Harris

 I picked up A Shadow Intelligence by chance.   It seemed like the sort of thing I'd be interested in.   I certainly was.   I was fascinated.   Oliver Harris is more than a continuation of English spy fiction; he is the next generation.   The cyber warfare being waged in A Shadow Intelligence is so deep and complex that much of the time I didn't have a clue what was happening - yet Harris's writing skill and the compelling voice of his protagonist Elliot Kane, kept me hooked for all 438 pages of the ebook.

Kane is MI6 but has wandered somewhat off from the mainstream.   He has spent his career under cover in exotic countries far afield.   He is back in England when he learns that his colleague and lover Joanna Lake has disappeared in Kazakhstan.   Immediately before vanishing she sent Kane a video in which he was in a hotel room with a dubious man.   The thing is, it wasn't him, he doesn't recognise the room or know the man.   He notices the date on a newspaper in the clip is a couple of weeks hence.

Naturally Kane gives his official spook surveillance the slip and heads off to Kazakhstan, the ninth largest country by area with one of the smallest populations per hectare.   A massive oil field has been discovered.   International corporations are flooding in - on the heels of their various official and non-official (or 'shadow') intelligence agencies.   Kane signs up with one of these and contacts the others.   He also brings his own resources to bear.   It all comes together in a spectacular climax.

Harris has clearly done his homework.   Whether what he describes is feasible or not doesn't matter a hoot.   It soon will be and Harris has plugged in to the contemporary AI paranoia.   He writes exceptionally well.   His pacing is both relentless and extraordinary.   A Shadow Intelligence is the first of his spy novels.   I shall certainly look out for the next, Ascension (2021).   I am also keen to try Harris's Nick Belsey crime novels.