Title: The Hollow Man
Author: Harris, Oliver
Published by: Vintage
Year: 2011
First published: Jonathan Cape, 2011
Date reviewed: 11.15
ISBN: 9780099552741

“The Hollow Man” is Oliver Harris’s first novel. His central character is a disillusioned, disreputable detective constable whose patch is Hampstead, but who knows the seedier parts of London too. The story concerns a suicide in a house in the exclusive millionaire’s row of the The Bishop’s Avenue. DC Nick Belsey is mainly trying to achieve his own disappearance from London and the Met, but can’t avoid getting drawn ever deeper into investigating the death.

The story is ingenious, the plot not so much labyrinthine as complex and twisted, the action fast-paced; the whole may be rather implausible but Harris provides enough detailed knowledge and research to make the events just possible. Credible or not, the book is certainly entertaining. His next book, “Deep Shelter“, also features Nick Belsey and I’m intrigued enough to put it on my reading list.