A "beguiling bastard of a hero" (Val McDermid) and "London's coolest cop" (The Daily Mail), Nick Belsey makes a memorable first impression in The Hollow Man (October), Oliver Harris's debut thriller. After waking up on the city streets following a bender, he peruses the previous night's crime sheet to see if it mentions his eventful evening. Along with making the misguided decision to go home with the boss's wife, Belsey crashed a squad car he stole from another precinct.
Facing disciplinary action, broke, homeless and mired in gambling debts, Belsey wants out. When Alexei Devereux, a wealthy recluse, goes missing, the down-on-his luck detective sees an opportunity for the taking: a new identity and a fortune. For Belsey's brazen plan to work, though, he needs to uncover the truth behind Devereux's shady dealings while evading the businessman's ruthless enemies and staying one step ahead of Scotland Yard.
Belsey emerged from Harris's fascination with the idea of someone simply walking away from their life--particularly a detective, who would have the skills to pull off such a daring deed. "It struck me as an exciting scenario," Harris said. "He was going to do whatever it took to escape. At the same time, he's not a bad person. He doesn't harm anyone in the process. But like perhaps a lot of people who veer into criminality he tells himself he's doing it for good reasons, which is to start afresh."
Using London as the novel's backdrop offered Harris a reason to roam the metropolis, where he lives, both on his own and while riding along with the police. The story, which takes readers from ritzy to derelict neighborhoods and into the City--an area that in medieval times constituted most of London and today is the financial hub--is "amazingly atmospheric," said editorial director Cal Morgan. "The Hollow Man makes you think of London as though it's a place of threat and menace. The idea of London being a character is never truer than in this book."
In his early 30s, Harris has earned degrees in English literature, Shakespeare studies and creative writing. His résumé includes working as a TV and film extra, assisting with research at the Imperial War Museum, and reviewing for the Times Literary Supplement. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in psychoanalysis and Greek myth while also crafting Belsey's next adventure, which takes the detective into a network of tunnels, constructed as air raid shelters, underneath London.
In The Hollow Man, the well-read Belsey admits to pilfering from pubs some of secondhand books used as adornment, grabbing "dusty hardbacks on history and philosophy" along with a pint. Like the detective, his creator's youthful indiscretions included taking a tome or two. In fact, the first novel Harris ever read by spy master John le Carré was swiped from a bar. Good thing for readers that he engaged in this bit of kleptomania: helping himself to decorative reading material "was actually one of the things that got me into crime fiction, because very often the books knocking around are old thrillers," Harris said.
author photo: Eamonn McCabe