Aidan Waits
3 total works
‘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.
‘Brooding, blistering. Sirens is a remarkable literary thriller, perfect for fans of Ian Rankin and James Lee Burke’ AJ Finn, author of The Woman in the Window
WATERSTONES THRILLER OF THE MONTH
I stopped going to work. I went missing. We still live in a world where you can disappear if you want to. Or even if you don't.
Detective Aidan Waits is in trouble
After a career-ending mistake, he’s forced into a nightmare undercover operation that his superiors don’t expect him to survive.
Isabelle Rossiter has run away again
When the teenage daughter of a prominent MP joins Zain Carver, the enigmatic criminal who Waits is investigating, everything changes.
A single mother, missing for a decade
Carver is a mesmerising figure who lures young women into his orbit – young women who have a bad habit of disappearing. Soon Waits is cut loose by the police, stalked by an unseen killer and dangerously attracted to the wrong woman.
How can he save the girl, when he can’t even save himself?
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Reader reviews:
'It is an utterly brilliant debut novel; dark, gritty, menacing and meaningful.' *****
'Compulsive reading, so well written that even the gruesome cruelty and sense of helplessness in a dark world seemed right.'*****
'Knox is always one-step ahead, deceiving the reader and creating a sexy, stylish world always with danger around every corner.' *****
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The bestselling debut from the winner of the Sky Arts Writer of the Year Award, the next big name in crime fiction - Joseph Knox.
‘He said he didn’t remember killing them…’
As a series of rolling blackouts plunge the city into darkness, Detective Aidan Waits sits on an abandoned hospital ward, watching a mass murderer slowly die. Transferred from his usual night shift duties and onto protective custody, he has just one job…
To extract the location of Martin Wick’s final victim before the notorious mass murderer passes away.
Wick has spent over a decade in prison, in near-total silence, having confessed to an unspeakable crime that shocked the nation and earned him the nickname of The Sleepwalker.
But when a daring premeditated attack leaves one police officer dead and another one fighting for his life, Wick’s whispered last words will send Waits on a journey into the heart of darkness…
Manipulated by a reticent psychopath from his past, and under investigation from his new partner, Detective Constable Naomi Black, Waits realises too late that a remorseless contract killer is at work.
Can Aidan Waits solve his last case before fleeing justice?
Or will his name be next on the hit list?