I often say that if you ever read a character that appears in multiple books, that you should start near the beginning. This book proves my point.

This book sees a young(ish) Manchester detective finds crime thriller, seeinga body in a disused hotel, and sets off to find out whodunit, along with his lazy, ne'erdowell boss. In many ways it's a perfectly decent read. It's your standard police fayre. The cop is almost blown off course, and has to deal with his demons, before saving the day.The
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My issues are I have little sympathy for the protagonist, who has real.emotional hang-ups that I have little patience for, that there are maybe 2 clues to who the murderer is (and then you're stretching it as you're unlikely to get it), but the worst is that you end up feeling you joined a story part way through, and you end up thinking that you've wandered into someone's story, part way through, and are too polite to ask how we got to this point of the sort.

The other thing is that there’s the whole Somerton Man thing (a famous murder victim/death in Australia). The victim is a clear call out to it, but no one mentioned it. At. All.

It's not a bad book, it's just I found myself thinking 'wait what now?' And 'oh come on' a lot, because the story was so daft. It stretches credulity a lot over things that don't matter.

Intelligent, compelling and entertaining. What makes this different from other thrillers is how complexly the author potraits damaged people. He makes them have so much humanity that you end up liking them, even though they're horrible human beings.

You can find this book review and others at my blog https://montanasmusings.wordpress.com

Uuuuummm.....wow. Just wow. This book immediately drew me in and I could not put it down. I started reading it around 11pm one night and had to tear myself away from my kindle at 4am so I could get some sort of shut eye. The exhaustion the next day was worth it.

Aidan Waits is a detective who works the night shift, and one night he discovers a body at the site of a reported break-in. He must tie up many loose ends not only in his professional life but his personal life as well.

This book was so intriguing. I don't normally read books like this so it was a nice break from the usual. It reminded me of all the crime shows I watch lol. The story kept my attention throughout, but towards the end it was getting a bit confusing. The reader won't be able to figure out the ending until it happens, so trying to put all the pieces together was hard because so much of it didn't make sense. But Knox is a great writer and by the end of the book I understood everything, no matter how outrageously impossible it seemed.

I would highly recommend this book to people. It was a fun read, and you will not be able to put it down.

*I received this book on NetGalley by Crown Publishing in exchange for an honest review.*

I loved reading this especially since it was set in Manchester and I knew all of the places that Knox wrote about making it even more creepy! A enjoyable but slightly confusing book but that is possibly because its the second in a series which I only realised half way through

I fell in love with Aidan Waits from the moment I started Sirens. I still loved him here, even though he’s become more mature and he’s not such a lost cause as he was in the first book. Or maybe he still is, but he certainly seems to be improving. If you love flawed detectives, you really need to give this series a go. Aidan is the classic tortured soul: he has a history of drug abuse and also a weakness: he can’t stand to see a suffering young woman. He always does everything he can to help them out.

The Smiling Man by Joseph Knox grabbed me from the very beginning and it never let me go. I was fascinated by the different storylines: the smiling man that nobody seemed to know, young Sophie and Cartwright’s threat, Aidan being practically harassed by the other police officers… and my personal favorite, the fantastically creepy flashbacks featuring Wally and that cruel and evil man. This last one wasn’t entirely a surprise, but I loved it anyway.

The case involving the smiling man was so intriguing that I honestly had no idea of what had happened. There was a dead man at an abandoned hotel and the owners didn’t even talk to each other. The guard heard voices and was hurt by someone else. But were they even involved or was this totally unrelated? And what about the fact that the victim didn’t even have fingerprints? This storyline kept becoming more and more complex and mysterious and I really enjoyed the addition of the “missing missing” concept, which was incredibly interesting to read about.

Sutcliffe is rude and unlikable, but his working relationship with Aidan was pretty interesting to read. You could say they almost make a good team. Detectives working the night shift is not something that I usually come across in detective novels or films (there are some exceptions, of course), and that’s probably the reason why I think Sirens and The Smiling Man are unique crime books that every noir fan should read as soon as possible.

I love the dark and gritty world that Joseph Knox has crafted, and I can’t wait to read the next (and final?) installment in the Aidan Waits series. Also, I want to get to know him better, especially when it comes to his family and relationships. because… who exactly is Aidan Waits?