Contemporary Authors

• Sirens ( "DC Aiden Watts" series) Crown (New York, NY), 2018

1. Sirens : a novel LCCN 2017031865 Type of material Book Personal name Knox, Joseph, author. Main title Sirens : a novel / Joseph Knox. Edition First edition. Published/Produced New York : Crown, 2018. Projected pub date 1802 Description pages ; cm ISBN 9781524762872 (hardcover) Library of Congress Holdings Information not available.

• Joseph Knox - http://www.josephknox.co.uk/joseph/

  Joseph Knox was born and raised in and around Stoke and Manchester, where he worked in bars and bookshops before moving to London.

  He reads, writes and runs compulsively.

• Crime Fiction Lover - https://crimefictionlover.com/2018/02/interview-joseph-knox/

  INTERVIEW: JOSEPH KNOX
  February 6, 2018 Written by Catherine Turnbull Published in Features 0 Permalink

  Last year, Joseph Knox’s novel Sirens was hailed as a powerhouse of razor-sharp urban noir – a page-turner with a beating heart. Although much has been written about the book that makes Manchester as dirty and dangerous as it gets, there isn’t much about the author himself on Knox’s website. ‘Joseph Knox was born and raised in and around Stoke and Manchester, where he worked in bars and bookshops before moving to London. He reads, writes and runs compulsively.’ We needed to know more about him, ahead of the publication of novel number two: The Smiling Man. So we ambushed him in an alleyway and made him talk about his new book, his detective character Aidan Waits, and more…

  What are crime fiction lovers going to love about The Smiling Man?
  There’s a lot packed in there – four intersecting plotlines which converge, overlap and, hopefully, explode at the novel’s climax. The plotlines are a young girl dealing with the threat of revenge porn, the dead smiling man of the title, a stalker following Aidan’s every move, and the strange side story of a little boy being used by his father figure to help rob houses. Along the way there are the usual horrifying, haunting and deadly bit-players from Aidan’s Manchester.

  Tells us about your antihero DC Aidan Waits. Has he learned from his actions in Sirens?
  Aidan’s come a very long way personally and gone absolutely nowhere professionally. In Sirens he was blackmailed into a nightmare undercover operation which his superiors didn’t want him to survive. Because he did, just barely, he’s more resented than ever within the police force. But, of course, during the events of Sirens, Aidan is loved and loves someone in return for the first time in his life. He can no longer treat his life as though it’s worthless and so hopefully we’re seeing the dawn of a new, slightly more professional detective. Maybe the kind of man you’d like around in a crisis.

  It took you eight years to write and rewrite Sirens. You’ve had a much shorter time to deliver book two. Has this dramatically changed the pace and style for The Smiling Man?
  It really has. A lot of those years writing Sirens were learning my craft, finding my voice, et cetera – and they were vital to the kind of noir I wanted to write. But another reason it took so long was that it was constructed entirely around various day jobs. Usually I had a couple of hours a day to write. This time, I was able to take six months off work and write every single day for 16 to 20 hours. It led to a much more immersive writing experience for me. I really felt like I lived it, and I think it allowed me to get more in there.

  You say that this book is much better than Sirens and takes your writing to a whole new level. How, what, why?
  Of course it’s for other people to really make that decision but…

  While I’ll always be grateful to Sirens for getting me published, it’s also a book that was very hard for me to write. It began as a kind of journalism about the people I was meeting during a very bad time of my life, and for that reason there are parts which will always make me wince or feel particularly upset. In the second book, free of that, all I had to think about was ‘what will make the best possible thriller?’ That felt incredibly freeing and fun.

  You kept a dark secret for eight years. How did you know the time was right to tell the world that you had been writing Sirens, when you pitched to agents and publishers at the Pitch Perfect session at the Bloody Scotland festival? Pitching in front of an audience and bestselling authors must have been tough.
  Pitch Perfect was great for me personally, but it didn’t directly lead to me getting an agent. To put it simply, the book wasn’t ready. There were people who would have happily sold it to a publishing house – but I would have always known it wasn’t the best I could possibly do. It was a hard decision to withhold it for another couple of years, but the right one. In terms of the pitch session itself, though, I’d totally recommend it. Not only did it force me to think of my work more seriously – the fear of public speaking will do that – but I also met like-minded people, all of whom shared a similar passion, and that can be a good motivator when you’re doing something as difficult as writing a book as an unknown author.

  The Smiling Man is based on a true and unsolved crime with the weirdest premise you’ve ever heard of. Can you tell us about that?
  Essentially, my inspiration was an unsolved Australian case. A man was discovered dead in suspicious circumstances with no identifiable characteristics. The plot thickened with the discovery of a note on his person which said ‘finished’. This note was then traced back to a book which had been discarded near-by and contained the phone number of a young woman. As a writer, by this point, I’m already overwhelmed with possibilities. Why would this man hide his identity? How was he so good at it? (In real life the man has never been identified) Why would someone kill him? And does the note/phone number and young woman give this a poignant, romantic dimension? From there I knew I had to write my version of events, transplanting them into Aidan’s deadly Manchester.

  Your author profile is very short on your website. Can you enlighten us further about your experiences and how you have drawn on them for your noir writing?
  Probably the best thing that can happen to a young writer – especially one writing noir – is having their heart broken. I did that, made my life and everyone else’s a misery for years and years, drank and cried all the time, took pills, worked in awful bars, lived in damp, sad, small flats, had failed small, sad relationships, lost a lot of friends, and – crucially – read as much as possible while I did. None of it felt like research at the time. I just thought I’d ruined my life and it would never change. Without Sirens to pour all of that darkness into, I don’t know what I would have done, and I really dread to think who, what and where I‘d be.

  You are a book buyer and seller. How do you spot which debuts are going to blow people away and which will suffer a low and lingering death?
  Ha – I wish there was a surefire way! The two most crucial parts are reading and listening to the publisher. If the book is good, or you can at least imagine who would like it, and if the publisher takes it seriously and believes in the author then that’s about as good a start as you can get. We get it wrong all the time, though, so it’s important to give everyone a fair shake.

  Do you have ideas you can share about which way you think the crime and thriller genre will morph next?
  I think the most exciting books I’ve read recently, both in fiction and crime fiction, take a real life event and examine it through fiction like Denise Mina’s The Long Drop. I can imagine a few of those things knocking our socks off. But generally trying to predict trends is a fool’s game.

  You secured a three-book deal for the DC Aidan Waits series. But can we expect to read more of him? You have said you have been writing about his character since childhood, so would it be inconceivable to let him wander off alone into the dark underbelly of Manchester without you?
  I have! Not many people know that, but I wrote short stories about a young man who I later realised was Aidan. You’ll definitely see more of him in book three – although I have a feeling it could end very badly for him…

  The Smiling Man comes out on 8 March. Read our full review of Sirens here, and for other exciting young noir authors try Tom Benn, Jonathan Lyon or Jordan Harper.

• Fully Booked 2017 blog - https://fullybooked2017.wordpress.com/2017/01/11/interview-joseph-knox/

  INTERVIEW . . . Joseph Knox
  sirens-interview-banner

  Sirens, the debut novel from Joseph Knox, has hit the crime fiction world like a cruise missile in these first days of 2017. On one level a police procedural, Sirens takes off in several different directions, and is full of wickedly sharp prose and a kind of grim poetry that shines an unforgiving light on modern Manchester and its criminal underworld. You can read our review of the book here, but it is a pure pleasure to have the author answering a few questions.

  Tell us something about your background, and how you came to be a writer.

  I began writing from a very young age. I was an insomniac as a kid and my parents quickly realised that giving me books and notebooks would stop me wandering round the house at night making trouble. I was sketching out short stories, comedy routines and characters as soon as I could hold a pen. Every word of it was shit – but it was a great early lesson in what writing really is: sitting alone for many hours, trying to reach that perfect moment where you forget you’re a person, forget you’re a boy in his bedroom writing, and begin to inhabit whatever world you’re writing about.

  For readers who have yet to meet Aidan Waits, run through his CV.

  Aidan is already on his very last chance as a detective when he’s caught stealing drugs from evidence. Although he uses substances, the reasons for his theft aren’t so cut and dry. He’s already an outsider. An unnatural fit for the job, he has a keen eye for detail and human frailty but is disconnected from those around him and filled with anger. The source of this anger, and Aidan’s self-destructive tendencies, is a key plot point of the book. There are flashes that he might be a keen detective, even a good man, but due to several things, might be too compromised to do the right thing.

  sirensIt seems from Sirens that you have a love-hate relationship with Manchester. Give us some idea of your impressions of the city. Was it a wrench to move to London, or a relief?

  A perceptive question! I’d say my relationship with Manchester leans more towards love. I grew up in Stoke on Trent and, to me, Manchester was the big city. It was where I dreamt of running away to, where I did run away to when the time came. It was the first place I ever really had my heart broken. The first place I had my nose broken. I failed in every way possible when I lived there – financially, romantically and personally. But I always appreciated it; to be surrounded by beautiful buildings, many of which clashed with garish modern things; to be surrounded by more art, artists, love and imagination than I could understand; to walk from one side of the city to another over the course of several hours, watching all kinds of strange, new people. The more I write and think about it, the more I love it. But I know my life would be very different if I’d stayed. Perhaps I never would have made it out of those basement bars Aidan’s stuck in?

  Staying with Greater Manchester, it seems to me that it has always ‘punched above its weight’ in terms of awful criminal deeds. Given the history of villainy which includes Brady and Hindley, Trevor Hardy, Harold Shipman and Dale Cregan, do you think that is a fair assessment?

  Punching above its weight is a pretty good line for Manchester in general. Like all truly great cities, it offers possibilities. Annihilation and salvation. The atmosphere of Manchester is both breathtakingly beautiful and bluntly cruel. Why wouldn’t that broadcast out to the population?

  Sirens is almost blacker than Noir. Which authors from the darker end of the crime fiction street have influenced you?

  James Ellroy is very important to me. As are the obvious hard noir guys like David Peace etc – and the weirder ones like James Sallis. The biggest influence on me as a writer, though, is Ross MacDonald. Archer is a man trying to understand people, trying to give them the benefit of the doubt. As the world gets crueler, that’s more important. Certainly as Aidan finds himself surrounded by enemies and, at a certain point in the novel I think it’s fair to say, finds himself totally doomed, his sympathy – rather than his bravery – is what I admire most.

  jnSirens is a great title. Are we talking blue flashing lights or voluptuous ladies luring sailors to their death?

  Thank you. The first time I thought of Sirens as a title for this book (working title was: Women Who Love Men Who Love Drugs) was when listening to There There by Radiohead. Thom Yorke’s wonderful line; ‘There’s always a siren, singing you to shipwrecks’ seemed to sum up Aidan’s plight.

  There’s so much to love about the word. Sex, danger, lights, noises, police, women, temptation. Could be a straight description of the almost-mythic women in the novel. A nod towards Aidan’s weakness for them. A nod towards what might happen to him if he succumbs to this weakness. But, yes, also a reference to the police. Their corruption is a major theme of Sirens. A combination of the two meanings, a police siren and a destructive siren, could even give the impression that the real danger in this novel is on the side of the law…

  The craze for anything Scandinavian in crime fiction seems to have passed. With your experience of selling crime books to the public, what do you think will be ‘the next Big Thing’?

  Ah! No one ever gets this shit right and why would they want to? The joy of books is surprise – a line, a title, a bestseller. I also read as much around the map as possible to avoid trend books. With that said, in general fiction I’ve recently been enjoying a lot of Faction. That is to say, novels which combine fact with fiction – perhaps even ones where the authors themselves can be characters. Perhaps not a future trend, but an idea of some crime books that’d turn my head.

  What next for Aidan Waits?

  Aidan Waits will return in 2018 in The Smiling Man. Based on a real-life unsolved murder. One of the most maddening and confounding I’ve ever encountered, mesmerising, kaleidoscopic evil, with surprisingly little written about it. I want each of the Waits novels to be a different kind of crime novel. The first is the undercover book. This is Aidan and his monstrous partner Sutty investigating a real case and driving each other mad.

  The Waterstones Exclusive of Sirens contains a Waits short story which takes place after the events of Sirens, and lightly sets up the events of book two…

3/4/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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Print Marked Items
Knox, Joseph: SIRENS
Kirkus Reviews.
(Feb. 1, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Knox, Joseph SIRENS Crown (Adult Fiction) $27.00 2, 20 ISBN: 978-1-5247-6287-2
On the outs since being caught stealing drugs from the evidence room, Manchester police detective Aidan
Waits is pressured by a superior into posing as a bounced cop to investigate a top drug dealer and hired by a
member of Parliament to find and report back on his runaway teenage daughter.
The dealer is Zain Carver, a slick operator whose stroke of brilliance is to sell drugs at the bars and clubs he
owns, with the bar manager distributing the goods and an attractive female employee collecting the money.
Conveniently enough for the damaged Waits, who narrates the novel through a cocaine haze, the MP's
down-and-out 17-year-old, Isabelle, has fallen in with Carver. The deeper Waits pushes into a world of
ruthless drug bosses, dirty cops, and corrupt politicians, the more he opens himself up to abuse--there's
hardly a scene in which he isn't receiving or recovering from a serious beating. But after falling for one of
Carver's collection girls and awakening to Isabelle's dire predicament, he becomes determined to do good.
The book is longer than it needs to be, losing sight for long stretches of the key disappearance a decade ago
of a woman who was preparing to testify against Carver. But Knox, taking a cue from legendary
Manchester band Joy Division's doom-laden romanticism, is brilliantly in command of the book's unusual
blend of horrific and hopeful. And in what other crime novel are you going to learn that ultraviolet lighting
is used in certain clubs so addicts wanting to shoot up can't see the veins in their arms?
A powerfully assured debut by a British novelist who has the potential to be a leading player in modern
noir.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Knox, Joseph: SIRENS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Feb. 2018. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A525461683/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=82c2d353.
Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A525461683
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Sirens
Publishers Weekly.
264.46 (Nov. 13, 2017): p38.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Sirens
Joseph Knox. Crown, $26 (352p) ISBN 978-1-5247-6287-2
British author Knox's impressive debut plunges the reader into the darkest corners of Manchester's druggy
club scene. When David Rossiter, a powerful politician, seeks help tracking down his wayward 17-year-old
daughter, Isabelle, now in the orbit of drug kingpin Zain Carver, the police brass select Det. Aidan Waits, a
disgraced undercover officer caught tampering with evidence, as the man for the job. Waits must go after
Carver and the corrupt officers who keep him in business with little support and only the merest hope of
professional and personal redemption. Waits's youth makes his being so hard-boiled a bit implausible, but
Knox sets a dizzying pace and convincingly evokes the murky, unbalanced atmosphere of an empire built
around drugs and money with vivid prose. As Waits, himself a drug user, peels back the layers of old cases
and past loyalties, the stakes rise for him and several young women in the middle of Manchester's nightlife
maelstrom. The hard-hitting action builds to a bleak, wrenching conclusion because, of course, not everyone
can be saved. Agents: Antony Topping and Dan Lazar, Writers House. (Feb.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Sirens." Publishers Weekly, 13 Nov. 2017, p. 38. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A515325982/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=1e146e74.
Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A515325982
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Sirens
Christine Tran
Booklist.
114.6 (Nov. 15, 2017): p29.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
* Sirens.
By Joseph Knox.
Feb. 2018.352p. Crown, 526 (9781524762872); e-book, 513.99 (9781524762896).
Detective Constable Aidan Waits agrees to infiltrate Manchester's most violent drug organization, hoping to
save his career after his reputation is tarnished by a charge that he stole meth from police evidence. The
Franchise's charismatic leader, Zain Carver, has established a virtually impenetrable system of drug sales in
bars, with collections handled by a group of beautiful young women known I as Sirens, who represent
Aidan's best opportunity for an "in," but before he can move, his operation is complicated by his
superintendent's insistence that he use his undercover access to gather information on MP David Rossiter's
runaway daughter, Isabelle, who has joined the Franchise. Posing as a dirty cop, Aidan slowly gains access
to Carver and Isabelle, but his investigation turns sideways as he begins to suspect that Isabelle ran to
Carver to escape something more dangerous. When Aidan finds Isabelle overdosed on a bad batch of
heroin, he suspects murder but must juggle his off-record investigation while hunting for the rest of the
batch in the midst of a freshly sparked gang war. Waits' voice is a compelling mix of sharp realism and
regret that plays well against the gritty, perpetually shrouded Manchester setting. Hard-boiled fans will
appreciate this debut's deep dive into the underworld and its well-concealed twists; a perfect choice for
readers who like their heroes a bit battered.--Christine Tran
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Tran, Christine. "Sirens." Booklist, 15 Nov. 2017, p. 29. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A517441757/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=82539f3a.
Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A517441757

"Knox, Joseph: SIRENS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Feb. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A525461683/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 4 Mar. 2018. "Sirens." Publishers Weekly, 13 Nov. 2017, p. 38. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A515325982/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 4 Mar. 2018. Tran, Christine. "Sirens." Booklist, 15 Nov. 2017, p. 29. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A517441757/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.

• The Guardian
  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jan/19/thrillers-roundup-review
  Word count: 919

  The best recent thrillers – review roundup
  Thrillers
  Thrillers roundup
  Sirens by Joseph Knox, Cast Iron by Peter May, Good Me Bad Me by Ali Land, Under the Harrow by Flynn Berry, Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough, Devour by LA Larkin

  Barry Forshaw

  Thu 19 Jan 2017 07.00 EST Last modified on Thu 22 Feb 2018 07.46 EST
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  What lies beneath … A journalist unearths secrets in Antarctica in LA Larkin’s Devour.
  What lies beneath … A journalist unearths secrets in Antarctica in LA Larkin’s Devour. Photograph: All Canada Photos/Alamy
  Sirens
  Many a debut thriller sinks without trace, while others have success embedded in their DNA. Joseph Knox’s Sirens (Doubleday, £12.99) is resoundingly in the latter category – a firecracker of a first novel which strongly suggests a far more experienced novelist (the book apparently took eight years to write). In a phantasmagorically realised Manchester, Aidan Waits, a detective in disgrace after pocketing seized drugs, is forced to go undercover. On the trail of the runaway daughter of an MP, Waits is soon entangled in a web of deception involving both the establishment and brutal drug barons. It’s a satisfyingly seamy slice of noir, with the conflicted Waits sporting all the accoutrements of the best antiheroes in the genre. Knox presents the city as pungently and uncompromisingly as Ian Rankin does Edinburgh.

  Peter May
  What do you look for in a thriller? Strongly drawn protagonists? Adroit orchestration of suspense? Rigorous plotting? Admirers of the Scottish writer Peter May are well aware that he usually delivers all these elements, but perhaps his metier is the vivid evocation of place – as his new novel, Cast Iron (Riverrun, £18.99), again proves. Western France – now May’s own stamping ground – is as much a character in the book as the Hebrides were in his formidable Isle of Lewis sequence. A heat wave has laid bare the bed of a French lake, revealing the murdered body of 20-year-old Lucie Martin. Forensic expert Enzo McLeod is tasked with cracking an impenetrable cold case, but when he discovers mistakes in the original investigation, he finds that he and his family are in the sights of an undiscovered murderer. Like most of May’s work, Cast Iron is shot through with the dark legacy of the past. If this isn’t quite the author at his best (the Lewis trilogy remains his magnum opus), it’s still a damn sight better than most of his contemporaries.

  Good Me Bad Me
  Sirens is not the only impressive debut this month. Ali Land’s Good Me Bad Me (Michael Joseph, £12.99) is an equally auspicious first appearance for a writer who holds our attention, Ancient Mariner-like, from the opening page of this unsettling narrative. Damaged Annie is living with the fact that she has turned in her mother to the police for murder. Given a new name, Milly, and sent to live with foster parents, she encounters appalling bullying at a new school, and has to deal with her new sister, the popular Phoebe, who treats her as a bitter rival. There are so many things to praise here, from the descriptions of the terrifying hierarchy of girls’ schools to the toxic atmosphere of a dysfunctional family and the characterisation of the beleaguered Milly.

  Under the Harrow by Flynn Berry
  Under the Harrow (Weidenfeld, £12.99) by American writer Flynn Berry has been prompting word-of-mouth enthusiasm, and it’s easy to see why. In prose that is economical but perfectly judged, Berry transfixes the reader. Nora is devastated by the savage killing of her sister and has herself been the victim of an attacker: she comes to believe that her sister’s death is somehow related to her own unsolved assault. Her obsession takes her into hazardous physical and psychological territory, and rarely has the device of the unreliable narrator been used so effectively.

  Behind her eyes
  Finally, two lively books in the thriller idiom by women prepared to move decisively beyond the parameters of the possible – but who somehow disable our scepticism. Sarah Pinborough’s Behind Her Eyes (HarperCollins, £14.99) is a novel already lauded by such writers as Harlan Coben and Neil Gaiman, not least for its audacious ending (not to be revealed here). It’s a Hitchcockian thriller with two female characters. The solitary Louise meets a man in a bar who (she finds out) is to be her new boss, but her involvement with him will have seismic consequences. Married Adele is a very different personality; we are given intimations that something traumatic has already blighted her life. These two women’s fates are to coincide shockingly. What is the genre here? Well, the fact that Pinborough’s previous area of expertise has been the supernatural novel should be borne in mind – but I can say no more.

  Devour
  Quotidian logic is similarly challenged in LA Larkin’s Devour (Constable, £8.99), with investigative journalist Olivia Wolfe fetching up in a frigid Antarctica where something ancient and malign has been hidden beneath a frozen lake for millennia. Unearthing long-buried secrets may lead to Olivia saving just one life – or unleashing Armageddon. This is the kind of unlikely but tense scenario that the late Michael Crichton specialised in; it seems that in Larkin he has an heir apparent.

  • Barry Forshaw’s Brit Noir is published by Pocket.

• Dead Good Books
  https://www.deadgoodbooks.co.uk/review-sirens-by-joseph-knox/
  Word count: 904

  Review: Sirens by Joseph Knox
  By Dead Good on February 3, 2017
  sirens by joseph knox
  by Karen Sullivan, Publisher at Orenda Books

  Ripping open the heart of Manchester to expose its dirty veins, Joseph Knox’s debut thriller Sirens paints a searing and unflinching portrait of the city – its ‘unblinking lights’ masking sordid streets where drug-takers and suppliers, addicts, violence and a pervasive gang culture are juxtaposed with the corruption, greed, showmanship and narcissism of its politicians, its ruling classes, its wealthy elite. Everyone’s on the take or the make, and no one can be trusted.

  Enter disgraced and damaged cop, Aidan Waits, whose own addictions have not only led to his downfall, but cloud his judgement and enshroud his troubled past. On suspension, he can face a prison term or slip over to the dark side of policing, where backhanders and favours mock the concept of law on the streets. He agrees to play mole, ingratiating himself with one of the city’s most prominent drug-dealers, while seeking answers to the disappearance of a leading politician’s 17-year-old daughter. Added to this, there’s a 10-year-old cold case – a missing girl, Joanna Greenlaw – whose presumed death is linked to drug baron, Zain Carver, the target of Waits’ underground investigations.

  Shovelling speed and drinking himself into a haze of half-remembered indiscretions, Waits slips under cover, recklessness and anger driving his investigations. He bears the brunt of a series of violent attacks, allows his thirst for affection and affirmation to compromise his decision-making, and takes risks that only an addled mind could contemplate. And yet, he gets it right. His instincts are visceral; his acceptance of violence and his own shortcomings provide an insight into the motivations of the perpetrators he is seeking.

  Sirens is an intelligent, multi-layered and explosive thriller, with a cast of characters that will undoubtedly spawn an unforgettable series. The sirens of the title are the girls who populate the dark corridors of the Manchester drug scene – beautiful money collectors and drug carriers, who entrance their victims, and draw them into an ephemeral web. They are ethereal, barely described – ‘a cruel kind of beautiful’ – as they lure, delight and then vanish.

  The action is pulsating, reaching fever pitch as Waits stumbles through his remit, swinging across the city and up and down its gleaming penthouse towers and into the filthy basements and frozen streets. There are well-timed lulls in the action, offering the reader the opportunity to digest the frenetic action, the multitudinous clues uncovered and then revealed. Manchester becomes a stark and unforgiving character in its own right (and it’s a tale of two cities – the one we see, and the one that exists just beneath the slightly clouded veneer), closely followed by the weather – the cold, dark fog of winter creating just the right sort of chill, and enriching the darkness that pervades this book.

  Harking back to the greatest purveyors of American Noir, from Raymond Chandler through to Ross MacDonald, this is hard-boiled crime at its very best, with stark descriptions, a pulsating plot, non-stop action, a terse narrative and unfettered violence. And yet, yet, there is beauty here – a grim but affectionate tribute to the lost, to victims, to a broken city, to the shortcomings of modern society, and the confused emotions, greed, desperation and desires that drive it. There is a bashed-up attempt at love. There is a whisper of redemption.

  Rich descriptions present vivid images: ‘Now, most of these derelict building sites are cannibalized for scrap. The others are left to rot, collecting rainwater in exposed foundations. Rusting like open sores in the ground. There were times during its three-year construction when it seemed that even Beetham Tower wouldn’t be finished. It went up, though, in spite of everything, extended like a middle finger to the entire city’ or ‘They called him the Bug because he would hover around a group of kids, salivating as they shot up. Then, once they were high, he’d lower himself down and kiss, gently, along their arms until he got the vein they’d shot into. Then he’d suckle at the wound, letting out low, satisfied moans. His primary physical threat was being literally infectious.’

  Sirens is a stunning and original debut. It’s smart, pacey, gritty and unforgiving; it’s a page-turner and it almost explodes with intrigue and excitement; but it’s also more than that. Joseph Knox has created something of a masterpiece here – a throwback to the best of noir fiction, but also an electrifying, thought-provoking and moving novel that will poke its head above the masses and be remembered. Astonishingly brilliant. For a debut? Unbelievable.

  Don’t miss Orenda Books’ interview with Sirens author Joseph Knox here – or read an extract from the book here.

  Buy Sirens by Joseph Knox
  Sirens by Joseph Knox
  Buy this book

  Karen Sullivan
  Karen Sullivan is Publisher of Orenda Books, an independent publishing company specialising in literary fiction, with a heavy emphasis on crime/thrillers. Authors include Ragnar Jonasson (Dark Iceland series), Steph Broadribb (Deep Down Dead), Agnes Ravatn (The Bird Tribunal), Michael J. Malone (A Suitable Lie) and Amanda Jennings (In Her Wake).

  Follow Karen on Twitter or visit the website.

• Yorkshire Post
  https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/lifestyle/books/review-sirens-by-joseph-knox-1-8337819
  Word count: 327

  Review: Sirens by Joseph Knox
  PAGE-TURNER: Joseph Knox's crime thriller Sirens is out now.
  PAGE-TURNER: Joseph Knox's crime thriller Sirens is out now.
  KATE WHITING
  Published: 10:09
  Tuesday 17 January 2017
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  HAVE YOUR SAY
  So short and dramatic has Joseph Knox written the chapters in his debut crime thriller, you’ll lose hours at night allowing yourself to read ‘just one more’.

  Page-turner is the only word for it. We meet our narrator, Detective Constable Aidan Waits in a brief, prologue that serves as a framing device for his reminiscences about the previous November. “I couldn’t have explained the girls, the women, who had briefly entered my life. Briefly changed it.”

  Waits is an anti-hero of sorts – damaged by a childhood in care, disgraced and suspended for stealing drugs from evidence lockers, he’s given one last shot at redemption and sent undercover on a suicide mission to feed information to drugs kingpin Zain Carver, so the force can flush out a mole. He eases himself into the role, hanging out at Carver’s seedy bars in Manchester, high on speed, but when a high-profile MP asks him to keep an eye on his teenage daughter Isabelle, who he meets at Carver’s notorious parties, things start taking a more sinister turn. Posh kids start dying from bad drugs – and signs point to the resurgence of the Burnsiders, who could have killed Carver’s old flame 10 years before.

  Actors Who Didn’t Want To Kiss Their Co-Stars
  Read More Hooch
  The ‘sirens’ Waits is drawn to aren’t fleshed out nearly enough, compared to the huge cast of men, and serve as little more than expendable gangster’s molls, but it’s a cleverly plotted and convincing read.#

  Doubleday, priced £12.99

• Lancashire Post
  https://www.lep.co.uk/lifestyle/books/book-review-sirens-by-joseph-knox-1-8338531
  Word count: 668

  Book review: Sirens by Joseph Knox Sirens by Joseph Knox PAM NORFOLK Email Published: 14:37 Tuesday 17 January 2017 Share this article Get Daily Updates To Your Inbox Sign up 0 HAVE YOUR SAY ‘We still live in a world where you can disappear if you want to. Or even if you don’t.’ Meet Detective Constable Aidan Waits, an amphetamine user and a police officer ‘in disgrace,’ cut loose by his bosses and living on the margins of society in the menacing underbelly of Manchester. Can he bring home a dodgy Cabinet minister’s runaway daughter, solve a cold case and corner one of the city’s most brutal drugs barons to keep his job? Joseph Knox, perhaps one of this year’s most promising debut authors, is a young man who spent much of his formative years in and around Manchester. He knows the city’s streets like the back of his hand and this dark, stunning and visceral thriller takes us from the decadence of its high spots to the degradations of its darkest corners. What he has produced in this stunning first novel is urban noir of the finest quality… a bleak, grittily authentic and gripping journey through corruption, cruelty, suffering, alienation and the devastating realities of the drugs trade. It seems DC Aidan Waits, a covert user of speed, has been caught bang to rights. He already had two strikes recorded against him for other misdemeanours and now the third could see him lose his job… he was witnessed taking seized cocaine from the secure area lockers at Manchester’s police headquarters. Waits now has two choices… he can be dismissed, charged, publicly disgraced and shown the inside of a cell, or he can go undercover, infiltrate the empire of dangerous drugs baron Zain Carver to find out which police officers are on his payroll and keep an eye on senior politician David Rossiter’s runaway teenage daughter Isabelle who is living at Carver’s south Manchester house. It’s a no-brainer for Waits but Rossiter is a manipulative man with powerful friends and Carver is deadly, radiating ‘cold, clean malice,’ operating a ring of girls called the Sirens who glide from club to club collecting his drugs cash… and he has a reputation for making women disappear. And as he starts to retrace 17-year-old Isabelle’s steps through a dark, nocturnal world, the troubled detective finds something else… the girl is terrified, and it’s not Carver who is frightening her. Now deep into Carver’s perilous orbit and moving nearer to the unsolved ten-year disappearance of Joanna Greenlaw, one of the drug dealer’s Sirens, he realises Isabelle was right to run away. Soon Waits is cut loose by his superiors, stalked by an unseen killer and dangerously attracted to the wrong woman. Now a bad batch of heroin is on the streets and people are dying. Caught between two worlds, can Waits save Isabelle… and himself? From its bruising depiction of Manchester’s seedy back streets and criminal lowlife to its exploration of the complexities of contemporary urban existence, Sirens packs a powerful punch as Knox peers into the bars and clubs where gangs, sex workers and drug dealers ply their pitiless trades. Dads Left Alone With Baby Go Viral! Read More Give It Love And inside the city that never sleeps are its nocturnal inhabitants… those, like Zain Carver, who are always ready to exploit the weak, the defenceless and isolated, and those few brave souls, like Aidan Waits, who are prepared to risk all even if it means saving just one life. Knox’s brilliant thriller bowls along at a cracking pace and with all the assurance of a seasoned author as the menace mounts, tensions rise, and the past starts to yield up some shocking secrets. Taut, tense, twisted, raw and gut-churning, this is a stand-out debut from an exciting new crime writer. (Doubleday, hardback, £12.99)

  Read more at: https://www.lep.co.uk/lifestyle/books/book-review-sirens-by-joseph-knox-1-8338531

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