JOSEPH KNOX
Getting a publishing deal is just a matter of knowing the right people, so the story goes, but that wasn’t the case for former Waterstones’ buyer Joseph Knox, as he tells Adrian Magson
NEW AUTHOR PROFILE
Joseph Knox And Adrian Magson
The natural assumption on hearing that a major chain bookseller’s crime and fiction buyer would find it easy to get a book deal is a long way short of the mark. As Joseph Knox, debut author of Sirens can testify, it took eight long years to complete and finally get his book published (by Doubleday) this January.
The first in a series, it’s set in a ‘sprawling, twilight northern city’ (Manchester), and introduces young detective Aidan Waits, in disgrace after being caught stealing drugs from an evidence room. That’s bad enough, but his problems really begin when he’s blackmailed by his superiors into taking on an undercover operation tracking down an MP’s runaway daughter, and finds himself at the centre of a nightmare from which there is no backing down.