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.

Sirens - Joseph Knox

At last – Manc noir! Deep black crime set in good old Manchester. When all is said and done, whyever not? Manchester has been derelict, the great British industrial wasteland, for over fifty years to my knowledge. When I taught there in 1980-1 the kids were battling racist cops led by a fascist religious maniac in the streets of Moss Side. They broke into the cop shop and stole the Special Branch murder kit the Met had hidden there.

Wait a minute … I’m talking myself into this, aren’t I?

To an extent, Joseph Knox has beaten me to it. Only to an extent. I don’t think he’s old enough to remember the good old days when every copper with aspirations was hopelessly corrupt, certainly in my Northern experience of the time. It is of course a matter of fact with the Met. Pretty much permanently. But I believe the war on the miners and the Hillsborough disaster were what separated proper cops from the scum. Cops are much better now.

But not according to Knox in Sirens. His cop, Aidan Waits, is suspended for corruption (stealing drugs from the station) and trying to save his career by doing a deep undercover job for his Superintendent. His investigation is complicated when a local MP enlists him to find his seventeen year-old daughter. Both jobs mean getting inside the Franchise, the main drug operation of the moment. This Waits does easily. He finds the girl – but then she is murdered. If Waits can’t find who did it, he’s going to get fitted up. Suddenly all the good guys are out to kill him while all the bad guys and gals want to help. In the manner of top quality noir, things become very grey. He sorts it, of course, because he was always intended to be a series lead. The solution is complicated but satisfactory – perhaps one linkage too many.

The main problem, though – and it is by no means a fatal problem – is that neither Knox nor his editor know when to end. It’s a series, guys – we can catch up with folks next time round. Far better, in a noir, to leave a few threads loose.