This immediately throws the reader off balance, and it takes a few pages before you realise it’s all part of the plot. Knox is in fact a character in his own novel, which is told through competing and often conflicting statements by the friends and family of Zoe Nolan, a Manchester student who has vanished without trace.
This post-modern playfulness works because it is embedded in a rich and compelling plot that twists and turns until the final pages. Sometimes risk pays off.
True Crime Story by Joseph Knox is out now (Doubleday, £14.99)
