The Hollow Man

Detective Constable Nick Belsey is a drinker and gambler and on shaky ground with the police force. His cards are being declined and he’s been evicted from his lodging. “He could apply for bankruptcy. Moral bankruptcy too.” Belsey is the best detective at his station, but also the worst. He knows the angles and how to work them.

Belsey begins impersonating a wealthy suicide case, Alexei Devereux, with the intention of disappearing with as much of the dead man’s money as possible. But this has the feel of a game, like he won’t actually do it. Plus, he’s still a detective and Devereux appears to have been involved in a huge scam involving casinos. There are intriguing leads to follow in the case while Belsey lays the groundwork show more for his escape. “He had a sense that wealth could have made him a better person.”

Belsey moves around London, basing himself in the empty house of Devereux at first, deftly conducting his own murder and fraud investigation parallel to the official investigations and committing crimes of his own as needed. He meets people, assesses them, uses them when he has to. “She looked professional, beautiful and awkward, like someone who’d found themselves alcoholic in the way you find something spilled on your shirt.”

There are nice touches of humor, such as a company called PS Security, as in Private Security Security. You know the level of competence by the name.

This a deftly plotted book, great story, and the first in a series. show less

You've never met a crooked cop until you've met Detective Nick Belsey. He bends the rules into pretzels and beyond.

When we meet Belsey he is awakening in a park meadow, hungover, with a police cruiser crashed nearby. Nevertheless he goes into work, where his job is already in jeopardy anyway, not to mention that he has been evicted from his apartment for nonpayment of rent. Nick takes the first call of the day. Alex Devereux, a wealthy businessman, is missing, and later determined to be an apparent suicide. His mansion seems to be the perfect solution for Belsey's temporary homelessness. He moves into Devereux's mansion, begins driving his Porsche, and even wearing his clothes. He begins the process for trying to get access to show more Devereux's Swiss bank accounts.

However, taking on the identity of Devereux (even as he maintains his day job as a detective) turns out to be not as simple as Belsey thought it would be. Devereux was apparently involved in some shady deals, and he seems to have enemies everywhere who don't realize he may already be dead. Soon people with connections to Devereux start turning up dead.

This is a police procedural with a twist. The plot was fairly complicated, but it all tied together in the end. I liked it well enough to get the second book in the series.

3 1/2 stars show less

You know it's a bad day when you wake up drunk on Hampstead Heath, in a crashed police car, with no personal effects. Even worse when you're also a copper. This is the lot of Detective Constable Nick Belsey, who decides to get out of his particular financial pickle by assuming the identity of a missing, presumed dead, oligarch called Alexei Devereux. Trouble is, there are others interested in the fate of Mr. Devereux, and Belsey needs all of his wits about him if he is to succeed in his scheme or at the very least get out alive.

The blurb for this book describes it as "gritty" and "original", and it is certainly both of those things. Throwing the reader into Belsey's story cold is a very effective starting technique; we can identify with show more his disorientation and confusion. And once the story starts, we have very little time to catch our breath as the action hammers on relentlessly. It is a very good book to read on the bus, as the chapters are short but action-packed. The ending might have unravelled just a little bit, but that could also have been me reading too fast, as I am prone to doing with thrillers that are close to being finished. But at least I didn't guess it; as it stood, I couldn't see any way out. Nicely done.

I would recommend this particularly for people who like thrillers set in London. show less

The Hollow Man is Oliver Harris's debut novel and the first release from Bourbon Street Books - Harper Collins' new imprint.

I loved the opening chapters and introduction to Detective Constable Nick Belsey. "The earth was cold beneath his body,. His mouth had soil in it and there was a smell of blood and rotten bark." Has he been attacked? In an accident? Well, yes, but Nick himself is the car wreck. He has a drinking problem, a gambling problem and at this point no possessions and no home. Once he remembers what he did last night, will he have a job?

He heads off to his station and is given an apparent suicide to investigate in a wealthy area of London. Nick finds the body and sends it on it's way to the morgue. With nowhere to stay that show more night he decides to sleep in the dead man's house. And eat his food, drink his booze, wear his clothes and drive his car. As he looks in the life of (wealthy) dead Alexei Devereaux, Belsey decides to take his money as well. After all, there's no family and it will be a fresh start for him somewhere else.

"It takes the average person twelve months to discover that their identity has been stolen. That was for the living. If this was what he was doing, stealing Devereaux's identity, then it gave him some time. He felt ready to pick up where Devereaux had left off. If he was gong to be born again it would be nice to be someone rich."

But many, many others have their eye on Devereaux's business as well. Taking over Devereaux's life won't be as easy as Nick first thought. Things are getting complicated. Complicating them more is Nick himself. He's also driven by his own desire for answers. So he starts to work the investigation. Unofficially of course.

Nick is the quintessential anti-hero. He's crooked, selfish and self serving. And I couldn't help but like him. For he's also very clever and does have some soft spots. I really enjoyed the way he insinuated himself into situations, finagled what he wanted or needed and bamboozled others. A true wolf in cop's clothing. But, I found myself rooting for him, hoping he gets away with it.

I'm unfamiliar with the setting of North London, but Harris did a good job of bringing his setting to life. The plotting is complex and involved, with many twists and turns. My only complaint would be the reveal of Devereaux's master plan - I found it a bit of a let down and somewhat unbelievable.

The Hollow Man is the first book in the Nick Belsey series. I'll be curious to see where Harris can take this character after this first outing. show less

A crackling and fast-paced introduction to a slightly scummy but oddly compelling anti-hero, DC Belsey. He's pretty much at the bottom of the barrel, nine lives used up and on his way out, when the book starts - and although it seems like it's just going to be another "cop who doesn't play by the rules" sort of novel, it ends up being way more. Some tenuous plotting at the end aside, it's a hell of a read and sprinkled with some great wit to boot. If you're looking for a crime novel that isn't Nordic and isn't cookie-cutter and isn't Luther-violent, this is a good start to what'll hopefully be a great series. Go for it, chums.

More at RB: http://wp.me/pGVzJ-Fz

This novel could have been so good but unfortunately Harris doesn't quite pull it off. It certainly starts well, with Detective Constable Nick Belsey waking up face down on Hampstead Heath after a night of almost industrial-scale hedonism. He gradually staggers back to Hampstead police station where he is based, and tries to reconstruct the previous evening (including the loss of his phone, wallet, keys and memory. All that he can remember was the long trail of booze and gambling that had, over the last couple of years, brought him to the verge of bankruptcy (moral as well as financial).
In the midst of this he takes a call about a missing person. Ordinarily such a call would have little interest for Belsey but the missing person lives show more on The Bishop's Avenue, also known as Millionaires' Row. Belsey drags himself over there to find the cleaner on the premises (conservatively valued at about £15 million) but no sign of the owner apart from an inconclusive note left on the dining room table.
However, from such an engrossing start Harris lets the novel slip away from him, largely through his apparent determination to add as many twists and elaborations as possible, though this simply served to leave the novelo unnecessarily convoluted.
This is a shame because his descriptions of the various locales of Hampstead, Camden and East Finchley are very accurately drawn (I live in the close hinterland of Hampstead and recognised the accuracy of many of his scenes).
I would certainly read another novel by Harris, but I would hope for fewer twists that are there simply to show how clever the writer is. show less

This is the 1st book in the Nick Belsey series, set in London. Belsey might be called an anti-hero, at least in this volume, but at the very least he's unethical. He's in the area when a report of a missing person goes out. He responds without calling in and discovers the missing person is a very rich man indeed, and Belsey, who has the audacity to be trying on the man's clothing as he wanders through the mansion, sees this as an opportunity to solve all his personal problems and get far away, if only he could assume temporarily the identity of the missing man long enough to enrich himself. And here, very early in the book, is where the reader thinks: he cannot possibly get away with this.

What follows is an intricate and interesting show more mystery and the story of whether Belsey gets away with his plan or not. I cannot say with any surety that I liked the character of Nick Belsey but I certainly came admire his talents. And I have bought the second book, so that's a good sign. show less