The Smiling Man (Aidan Waits) - Hardcover

Knox, Joseph

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0857524402 ISBN 13: 9780857524409

Publisher: Doubleday, 2018

Synopsis

‘Gritty as hell. I loved it. A great urban cop thriller’ Ian Rankin

As heard on BBC Radio 5 Live Phil Williams Show

'Talents such as Knox rarely emerge more than once in a generation. A crime fiction masterpiece' ***** Metro

'Packing a punch from the very first page. You will love The Smiling Man' Jane Harper, author of The Dry

From the bestselling author of Sirens, Detective Aidan Waits is on the hunt to find the identity of The Smiling Man.

Disconnected from his history and careless of his future, Detective Aidan Waits has resigned himself to the night shift: an endless cycle of meaningless emergency calls and lonely dead ends.

Until he and his partner, Detective Inspector Peter ‘Sutty’ Sutcliffe, are summoned to the Palace, a vast disused hotel in the centre of a restless, simmering city. There they find the body of a man. He is dead.

And he is smiling.

The tags have been removed from the man’s clothes. His teeth have been filed down and replaced. Even his fingertips are not his own. Only a patch sewn into the inside of his trousers gives any indication as to who he was, and to the desperate last act of his life...

But even as Waits pieces together this stranger’s identity, someone is sifting through the shards of his own.

When mysterious fires, anonymous phone calls and outright threats start to escalate, he realises that a ghost from his own past haunts his every move.

And to discover who the smiling man really is, he must first confront himself.

About this title

Review

"If you liked Sirens, you will love The Smiling Man. Gritty, noir, and packing a punch from the very first page." (Jane Harper, author of The Dry)

"Gritty as hell. I loved it! A great urban cop thriller" (Ian Rankin)

"Sirens was one of the best books published last year and this intense, blackly comic follow-up is just as good. Joseph Knox has conjured up a sense of evil and corruption you can almost smell it." (Jake Kerridge Sunday Express)

"Razor-sharp urban noir – very special indeed." (Lee Child)

"Sirens is a powerhouse of noir. Joseph Knox owns Manchester and paints it in all its grimy colours." (Val McDermid)

"Imperfect as Aidan Waits is, the Manchester DC is the shining light in a world peopled by the worst kinds of bad people. This is Knox's second Waits book in what holds the promise of a classic series." (Sunday Times Crime Club)

"Talents such as Knox rarely emerge more than once in a generation. A crime fiction masterpiece" (Metro)

"If you like your crime fiction dark, gritty an contemporary, then Joseph Knox’s latest novel is for you . . . dripping with dark humour, written with style, a dark and engrossing ride through the mean streets of Manchester" (Clair Woodward Daily Express)

"Promises to be a classic series" (Guardian)

"Although nominally a police procedural, The Smiling Man has the sense of place and vivid atmosphere of a classic PI novel. .. Stylish, intelligent and full of heart, Joseph Knox is the best thing to have happened to English crime fiction in years." (Irish Times)

Book Description

From the bestselling author of Sirens, Detective Aidan Waits returns - on the hunt to find the identity of The Smiling Man.

About this edition

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0857524402
• ISBN 13: 9780857524409
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 416