Book #19 Sirens

Sirens by Joseph Knox
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

More noir than a bucket of tar. Although perhaps the protagonist does not quite fit the noir bill. Detective Constable Aidan Waits is a disgraced officer working in the sleazy drug world of Manchester. He is coerced into running a sting operation by his Superintendent, against a local drug lord. Nothing is as it seems though when he is summoned to the penthouse home of David Rossiter MP, a manipulative man with powerful friends. His daughter Isabelle has run away again. Waits is to find her but not bring her home? Waits' investigation takes him into the nocturnal, Mancunian world of drug dealers, users, prostitutes, BDSM and all things perverse.

In retracing Isabelle's steps he finds an intelligent seventeen-year-old girl who is scared to death of something. And how is her predicament linked to the unsolved disappearance of a young woman just like her? All along, Waits struggles with his own redemption. He is a user - cocaine, uppers, downers - more often than not he doesn't know whether he is 'up' or 'down'. How can this troubled junior detective come out of this alive as he is stalked by an unseen killer.... Is there a common denominator that links all of these events?

This first novel from Joseph Knox is a tough read, not for the squeamish. It is dark and brutal and utterly compelling.

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