Nick Belsey, séduisant enquêteur à la brigade criminelle de Hampstead à Londres, est sur la corde raide. Endetté, alcoolique, marginalisé, son avenir dans la police ne tient plus qu’à un fil. La disparition d’un oligarque russe lui offre une porte de sortie : il endosse l’identité de la victime. Mais les ennuis commencent quand Nick découvre le corps et comprend qu’il ne s’agit plus tant de détourner quelques fonds que de sauver sa peau…

Sur le fil du rasoir

Nick Belsey, flic à la brigade criminelle de Hampstead Heath, est totalement fauché: plus de logement, plus de cartes de crédit, plus de voiture. Une disparition dans ce quartier huppé de Londres lui permet de résoudre ses problèmes immédiats : le "disparu", un oligarque russe nommé Alexis Devereux, a laissé une belle maison, un Porsche Cayenne et quelques cartes de crédit. Belsey envisage aussitôt d'effacer son peu glorieux passé financier en profitant de la situation et commence par s'installer à demeure. Ses vrais problèmes commencent lorsqu'il découvre le corps de Devereux, et qu'il prend conscience de ne pas être le seul à convoiter la fortune de la victime... Tout en continuant de mener, de manière fort acrobatique, son enquête, Belsey se retrouve malgré lui entraîné dans la cour des grands, royaume de la corruption et du pouvoir, où sa petite arnaque sympathique est dépassée par un complot plus ambitieux, émanant de criminels autrement armés et déterminés. Et bientôt, il n'est plus seulement question de mettre quelques centaines de milliers de livres à gauche, mais bien de sauver sa peau.

British spy Elliot Kane is forced out of semi-retirement to investigate a colleague's suspicious death on Ascension Island, a remote and rocky outpost of the British military in the middle of the Atlantic. Despite foiling a plot to incite a new world war, Elliot Kane has been on probation with MI6 since his rogue misadventures in Kazakhstan. Granted a job teaching literature to college students, he surprisingly enjoys a conventional life away from the intelligence services. Then a former colleague reaches out with a request: one of her tech specialists on a long-term, covert mission has killed himself, and the agency needs to find out why before proceeding with the vital operation. The carrot in this offer is helping his old friend; the stick is more disciplinary action if he doesn't comply. So Kane takes on deep cover again and heads to one of the most remote places on the planet, Ascension Island. A curious legacy of England's imperial past, Ascension is a desolate rock made of dead volcanic cones located in the Atlantic Ocean halfway between Brazil and Angola. Only employees and their families are allowed to reside there, and the island contains both British and American military bases. After learning that a teenage girl disappeared on the same night as the technician's suicide, Kane finds himself with two mysteries to solve. With local tensions running high, he needs to move quickly before suspicion falls on him. Kane soon realizes the island has more secrets than even the government knows, some leading straight to the highest offices in London.

Ascension

Ascension: the most remote island in the world . . .
Elliot Kane, former spy, trying to leave the world of espionage behind. 
Kathryn Taylor: a stalled career in MI6, running the South Atlantic desk. 
Rory Bannatyne: covert technical specialist. Dead, apparently of suicide. 
Three friends from a mission many years ago  reconnect when one of them dies on Ascension Island. Rory Bannatyne had been tasked with tapping a new transatlantic data cable, but a day before he was due to return home he is found hanged. When Kathryn Taylor begs Kane to go over and investigate, he can't say no, but it's an uneasy reintroduction to the intelligence game. 
Ascension is a curious  legacy of England's imperial past. Only employees and their families are allowed to live there. It's home to several highly-classified government projects, a British and American military base, and forty dead volcanic cones. Entirely isolated from the world, the disappearance of a young girl at the same time as Rory's death means local tensions are high. Elliot needs to discover what happened to her as well as to Rory. But the island contains more secrets than even the government knows, and it's not going to give them up without a fight.

Nick Belsey, ayant pris quelques risques déontologiques dans ses précédentes aventures, est maintenu à la brigade en conditionnelle surveillée. Il a promis de se tenir à carreau, mais on ne se refait pas... En cette journée de canicule ponctuée d'orages à Londres, Nick, qui a suivi un chauffard en BMW jusqu'à une impasse, tout d'un coup ne le voit plus. Où l'homme a-t-il bien pu disparaître ? Intrépide et ingénieux, Nick force l'entrée d'un curieux bâtiment incurvé et se retrouve dans un abri souterrain : des couchettes en fer, des ossements de rongeurs, mais aussi des caisses de champagne Krug et une fortune en antidépresseurs et calmants divers. Un endroit bien pittoresque pour y emmener sa nouvelle conquête, une étudiante en art de 20 ans. Mais lors de leur petite fête aux bougies, la jeune fille s'évapore. S'engage alors une sorte de jeu de piste où Belsey, sur les traces du mystérieux kidnappeur cagoulé de gris, se retrouve une fois de plus dans une posture qui met sa carrière en péril. L'homme le manipule, lui envoyant des emails énigmatiques qui l'entraînent dans un réseau insoupçonné d'abris souterrains et de tunnels inquiétants. On joue au chat et à la souris dans ce roman moderne et insolite, qui révèle d'étonnantes facettes de Londres, terrain propice aux complots et à la corruption.

Le réseau fantôme

From the author of the acclaimed The Hollow Man and Deep Shelter, comes the third installment featuring the shrewd, cynical, and brilliant London detective, Nick Belsey, whose investigation into a child's disappearance pulls him into the hedonistic orbit of a young, hot celebrity actress/musician and the dark world lurking underneath its glamorous exterior. Twenty-seven, rich and beautiful, Amber Knight is living everyone's dream. Her music career is established, her acting career is taking off, and she has a lifestyle fit for the top of the A-List. So why has she started acting so strangely? At least, that's how it seems to Nick Belsey. A less celebrated resident of North London, Belsey's decade-long career at Hampstead CID is coming to an abrupt end, but he still can't seem to kick his habit of getting into serious trouble. When he's asked by a desperate mother to help find her only son, Belsey has to infiltrate Amber's glittering world. The seedy underside to her seemingly perfect life-a realm of excess, obsession, lust, and greed-doesn't surprise him. What does is the blood trail that leads directly to Amber. As one twisted crime is followed by another, Belsey finds himself chasing even more answers than when he started out. And when the stakes are raised dangerously high, Belsey's own survival is at stake. It may be too late to save his reputation but he's not ready to die just yet-and especially not at the hands of a celebrity."Harris has a terrific sense of place, hurtling between the wealthiest and most-run-down areas of London. But the cleverest thing about his third Belsey novel is the way the plot unfolds in a chilling and totally unexpected direction."-Sunday Times (London)

Livres