A review by jimbowen0306
The Smiling Man by Joseph Knox

3.0

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.