I've now read four out of five Knox novels. I remain somewhat ambivalent. He is clearly a first-rate writer; his literary style is excellent. He has a gift for titles. You get hooked in by his storytelling but, in the end, it's often not quite as good as it seems.
Imposter Syndrome is a perfect example. Great title. We get instantly buttonholed by his narrator and swept along by a twisty storyline. But yet again, when everything is unravelled, it turns out to be ever so slightly silly. Obviously I won't say why. Read it for yourself and make your own judgements.
Lynch is a con man who, in the best Hitchcockian tradition, gets involved in his next scam by accident. He literally bumps into a beautiful woman in the lobby of the Heathrow Sofitel and she mistakes him for her long-losr brother. This is not the silliness I mentioned earlier; all such adventures srart with a jaw-dropping coincidence and rely on the general view that 'coincidences happen, don't they?' Bobbie Pierce, the beautiful woman, goes one step further. She tattoos a broken heart under Lynch's eye to improve the resemblance to missing Heydon. She then introduces him to the remaining members of the super-rich, dysfunctional Pierce family. The mother, retired movie star Miranda, offers Lynch £35,000 and free tattoo removal to recover Heydon's bag from a local moneylender. The bag contains Heydon's phone and a video message recorded on the night he disappeared.
Lynch is hooked and digs ever deeper into the mystery. Because everybody involved is super rich, we get private security operators, millionaires who keep themselves young with blood transfusions from their twin sons, ex-SAS psychos who now run hi-tech solution companies for the stressed over-wealthy. There is violence and gore and compelling characters (including the occasional dud, like the wannabe Tech Bro who uses the surname Control). It all moves at an exhilerating pace. I wasn't at all surprised at who was responsible for it all, but nor was I convinced. Great fun, yes. Classic of the genre, not quite.
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ALSO by Joseph Knox and reviewed on this blog: Sirens, Smiling Man, True Crime Story. Use the search box on the right---
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