Sirens

November 13, 2017
British author Knox’s impressive debut plunges the reader into the darkest corners of Manchester’s druggy club scene. When David Rossiter, a powerful politician, seeks help tracking down his wayward 17-year-old daughter, Isabelle, now in the orbit of drug kingpin Zain Carver, the police brass select Det. Aidan Waits, a disgraced undercover officer caught tampering with evidence, as the man for the job. Waits must go after Carver and the corrupt officers who keep him in business with little support and only the merest hope of professional and personal redemption. Waits’s youth makes his being so hard-boiled a bit implausible, but Knox sets a dizzying pace and convincingly evokes the murky, unbalanced atmosphere of an empire built around drugs and money with vivid prose. As Waits, himself a drug user, peels back the layers of old cases and past loyalties, the stakes rise for him and several young women in the middle of Manchester’s nightlife maelstrom. The hard-hitting action builds to a bleak, wrenching conclusion because, of course, not everyone can be saved. Agents: Antony Topping and Dan Lazar, Writers House.

February 1, 2018
On the outs since being caught stealing drugs from the evidence room, Manchester police detective Aidan Waits is pressured by a superior into posing as a bounced cop to investigate a top drug dealer and hired by a member of Parliament to find and report back on his runaway teenage daughter.The dealer is Zain Carver, a slick operator whose stroke of brilliance is to sell drugs at the bars and clubs he owns, with the bar manager distributing the goods and an attractive female employee collecting the money. Conveniently enough for the damaged Waits, who narrates the novel through a cocaine haze, the MP's down-and-out 17-year-old, Isabelle, has fallen in with Carver. The deeper Waits pushes into a world of ruthless drug bosses, dirty cops, and corrupt politicians, the more he opens himself up to abuse--there's hardly a scene in which he isn't receiving or recovering from a serious beating. But after falling for one of Carver's collection girls and awakening to Isabelle's dire predicament, he becomes determined to do good. The book is longer than it needs to be, losing sight for long stretches of the key disappearance a decade ago of a woman who was preparing to testify against Carver. But Knox, taking a cue from legendary Manchester band Joy Division's doom-laden romanticism, is brilliantly in command of the book's unusual blend of horrific and hopeful. And in what other crime novel are you going to learn that ultraviolet lighting is used in certain clubs so addicts wanting to shoot up can't see the veins in their arms?A powerfully assured debut by a British novelist who has the potential to be a leading player in modern noir.

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Starred review from November 15, 2017
Detective Constable Aidan Waits agrees to infiltrate Manchester's most violent drug organization, hoping to save his career after his reputation is tarnished by a charge that he stole meth from police evidence. The Franchise's charismatic leader, Zain Carver, has established a virtually impenetrable system of drug sales in bars, with collections handled by a group of beautiful young women known as Sirens, who represent Aidan's best opportunity for an in, but before he can move, his operation is complicated by his superintendent's insistence that he use his undercover access to gather information on MP David Rossiter's runaway daughter, Isabelle, who has joined the Franchise. Posing as a dirty cop, Aidan slowly gains access to Carver and Isabelle, but his investigation turns sideways as he begins to suspect that Isabelle ran to Carver to escape something more dangerous. When Aidan finds Isabelle overdosed on a bad batch of heroin, he suspects murder but must juggle his off-record investigation while hunting for the rest of the batch in the midst of a freshly sparked gang war. Waits' voice is a compelling mix of sharp realism and regret that plays well against the gritty, perpetually shrouded Manchester setting. Hard-boiled fans will appreciate this debut's deep dive into the underworld and its well-concealed twists; a perfect choice for readers who like their heroes a bit battered.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)