Imposter Syndrome by Joseph Knox, blog tour

The moment I read Knox’s first book, Sirens, the first in his excellent Manc-noir Aidan Waits trilogy, I knew I’d want to keep on reading this author. After the three Aidan Waits books, he did something else with his fourth novel True Crime Story (I have the hardback with shocking pink spredges!), and now three years later comes another standalone in Imposter Syndrome, and it has a cracker of an opening line…

When you’re living a lie, you find it’s best to avoid close attachments.

Lynch is a con man. Burned out, he’s abandoned Paris, and Clare (who at this point could be alive or dead) and is back in London, broke and wearing a shiny second-hand suit. Having taken the first tube out of the Eurostar terminal, he’s deposited at Heathrow where he’s considering his next move – what he really needs is sleep – when he collides with a woman who goes flying. When he helps her up, she is surprised.

‘Heydon?’ she gasps, finally. ‘Aitch is that you?’

Turns out that Lynch is the dead spit of the woman, Bobbie’s, troubled younger brother, who has been missing for five years, presumed but not confirmed dead – he’d abandoned his car on the Albert Bridge. Only Heydon’s little tattooed upturned broken heart on his cheek like a tear which Bobbie did for him prison style, tells the two men apart at first glance. Lynch and Bobbie get on well, she confesses to him she’s on her way to rehab in the USA to placate her parents and persuades him to stay. He wakes up in her room the next morning to find Bobbie gone, and his cheek tattooed. WTF!

She soon texts, saying that he should go to their family home – there’ll be no-one in – and he can grab loads of cash from her room. She gives him the codes for a keybox and the alarm. Lynch has an opportunity – but can he trust her? Frankly, he has nothing to lose…

We all know that this is only the beginning of things. But off he goes to the posh house where Bobbie lives and gets caught in the act of liberating the funds Bobbie was giving him. He hasn’t reckoned on the rest of the family though, her mother Miranda, her sister Reagan and her father. One look at that tattoo and new plans hatch all around in which Lynch will be required to play a part. There is no love lost between Bobbie’s parents – separate wings – and both offer money to him to play Heydon for them. Lynch has a feeling that all along, he’s being watched somehow, but can’t work out how or who. He’s broke so he plays along for the family have powerful friends and enforcers.

Lynch is a classic small con-man forced into playing with the big guys and so made me think of Eric Ambler’s hapless crook Arthur Simpson in The Light of Day aka Topkapi (Peter Ustinov won an Academy Award for his performance as Simpson). While Lynch in no way resembles Ustinov’s con man, he shares one thing that ensures we’re always on his side – he’s the underdog, and as such will be forced to employ reserves of resilience and to be ever resourceful.

This is a novel that once started you don’t want to put down – going through levels of intrigue and Lynch being a veritable piggy-in-the-middle, passed from one side to the other, but all the while gleaning information here and there and gradually putting together the picture – well, one version of it anyway. The twists and revelations that come mean constant adjustment for Lynch as he attempts to free himself from the situation he walked into, the reader needs to keep their wits about them. Knox writes with real pace, plenty of humour too – you need that to leaven all the gritty stuff. When are we going to see one of his books adapted for the screen? Superb!

Source: Review copy – thank you. Doubleday hardback, 384 pages.

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