True Crime Story

The Aidan Watts trilogy is excellent. This stand alone novel is better. Unable to put it down.

This felt like a really bizarre book. I started reading it, assuming Zoe Nolan was in fact a true life missing person - an early page does show a picture of a genuine young woman. However, as I progressed through the introduction and first couple of chapters, it became clear this was a fictitious story made to look like a factual real life case that happened in 2011. It was very confusing. Joseph Knox explains in the introduction that he experienced numerous issues with people associated to the case (including threats towards him and his family) and he subsequently parted company with his publishers over the content of the book. Throughout the 'True Crime Story', most chapters conclude with email exchanges between Joseph Knox and a fellow author called Evelyn Mitchell, where certain sentences have been 'sanitised' - presumably for sensitive reasons. Again, on reflection, Mr Knox's own accounts in devising the book and his professional relationship with Evelyn Mitchell, who interviewed the people involved, are also fictitious. I even found myself searching the Internet to look up the media stories about Knox's libel difficulties - these are nowhere to be found. Unfortunately, books like this can leave readers scratching their head. It's almost like an attempt to turn the book's content on it's head and leave you second guessing what to believe. It was once I had progressed through 20% of 'True Crime Story' that the penny completely dropped and I took everything in the book at face value. In my opinion, 'True Crime Story' is to be approached as a completely fictitious publication. There is no way, a genuine missing person would be spoken about negatively like this by those who supposedly loved her and befriended her. Unfortunately, another reason I didn't like this 'True Crime Story' is that it is told in narrative passages, with the various people associated with Zoe Nolan telling their story from their own perspective. This includes Zoe's friends, family and the professionals linked to the missing person enquiry. I simply don't enjoy books that are written in this manner. It almost felt like reading multiple interviews, rather than a fluent story that reflects the version of events from the various sources. Joseph Knox has created a readers 'noir' here, that is almost like an alternative book that breaks the mould and makes the reader believe everything is totally authentic and real life. Sadly, I can only give it two stars. It is not a writing style I enjoy and 'True Crime Story' was a huge disappointment for me. Many readers and critics, have praised this book for Joseph Knox's ability to push the boundaries of crime writing that bit further. It is a bold move for any author to adopt a three dimensional way of writing, but what Mr Knox has done here is draw ...

Knox gives us a unique look at a true crime story in a fiction format. Inserting himself into the book was brilliant. The book itself was quite slow at the get go and came across disjointed with so many snippets from so many people, when it finally started to come together it was unstoppable. So stick with it ... it’s quite an engrossing read. The audio version was quite difficult to follow as there were so many voices. I found it to be a much better read than listen. Thank you to Doubleday UK, RB Media and NetGalley for an ARC and an ALC of this book.