Nick Belsey, from Hampstead CID, is a crooked cop, or at any rate a cop who bends the rules as far as they can be bent. Although, by hook or by crook, he normally does get results the hard way. He is a most cynical character who has already appeared in two previous gripping books in which his struggle to keep abreast of the engulfing tide and keep both his job and his liberty, and have proven compulsive joyrides across the dark side of North London. He is still living on the brink as his new travails begin, homeless and forlorn when he is asked by a desperate mother to help find her missing son who was part of the entourage of a charismatic tabloid pop star. The journey that ensues proves bloody, cynical and engrossing and makes sin and corruption a particularly inviting mirage in the eyes of a character who is greyer than grey. Strong but captivating stuff.
Amber Knight is London's hottest ticket - pop star, film star, front-page, gossip. Nick Belsey is less celebrated. He can't shake his habit of getting into serious trouble. His career at Hampstead CID is coming to a dishonourable end. He is currently of no fixed address. But a knock on the door is about to lead Belsey straight into the hollow heart of Amber's glittering life - a world populated by the glamorous and the lonely, the desperate and the obsessed. A deadly combination. The House of Fame is a blistering joyride into the murderous underside of celebrity. The latest book in the hugely admired Belsey series, it sees one of the most cunning and audacious characters in contemporary fiction throw himself headlong into his most inextricable mystery yet, and come face to face with a ghost from his own notorious past.
Oliver Harris was born in north London in 1978. He has a first-class degree in English Literature and an MA in Shakespeare studies from UCL, and an MA in creative writing from UEA. He has worked in clothing warehouses, PR companies and as a TV and film extra. More recently he assisted with research in the Imperial War Museum archives, and continues to act as a reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement. He is pursuing a PhD in psychoanalysis and Greek myth at Birkbeck's London Consortium.