Absolute pleasure to take part in the Blogtour for Imposter Syndrome by Joseph Knox.
About the Author
Joseph Knox has lived in Stoke on Trent, Manchester and London. In 2020, he became an Irish citizen. His debut novel Sirens was a bestseller and has been translated into eighteen languages. The Smiling Man and The Sleepwalker are the second and third books in the Waits trilogy. His first standalone novel, True Crime Story, was a Times number one bestseller. Follow @josephknox__ on X
About the book
When you’re living a lie, you find it’s best to avoid close attachments…
Lynch, a burned out con-artist, arrives, broke, in London, trying not to dwell on the mistakes that got him there. When he bumps into Bobbie, a rehab-bound heiress - and when she briefly mistakes him for her missing brother - Lynch senses the opportunity, as well as the danger…
Bobbie’s brother, Heydon, was a troubled young man. Five years ago, he walked out of the family home and never went back. His car was found parked on a bridge overlooking the Thames, in the early hours of the same morning. Unsettled by Bobbie’s story, and suffering from a rare attack of conscience, Lynch tries to back off.
But when Bobbie leaves for rehab the following day, he finds himself drawn to her luxurious family home, and into a meeting with her mother, the formidable Miranda. Seeing the same resemblance that her daughter did, Miranda proposes she hire Lynch to assume her son’s identity, in a last-ditch effort to try and flush out his killer.
As Lynch begins to impersonate him, dark forces are lured out of the shadows, and he realises too late that Heydon wasn’t paranoid at all. Someone was watching his every move, and they’ll kill to keep it a secret. For the first time, Lynch is in a life or death situation he can’t lie his way out of.
Reading this made me realise I have to dust off my copy of True Crime Story and read it again, also that I wish I were in charge of a streaming service so I could buy books to develop into screen material, whilst also being aware that there probably isn't enough money in the world to do fair justice to the amount of cracking books there are. This is one of those reads that would be a spectacular on-screen experience - given the right eye for cast and detail.
Lynch is a pinball in a machine without a task or a purpose, just trailing around until the right moment or opportunity comes around. Bobbie enters his universe of lies, convenience and the world of con. It appears at the time, as if two troubled souls in need of support and driven by trauma, need something from each other. Essentially this is what leads Lynch into his next falsity - he becomes the long lost brother of Bobbie.
The more he gets involved the more Lynch appears determined to find out what happened to Heydon, the man he shares a face with. A simple con turns into something closer to - the deeper the secrets the more destructive they are - with a side dish of criminal intent and a smidgen of gangster style justice.
It's riveting piece of fiction, with the kind of ending that makes me hope we see Lynch again in some capacity. The charming con-man with an unhealthy lack of any sense of danger, who is so quick on his feet that the reader can't help but want him to succeed, perhaps because of the sheer audacity at times. It's a great read and I highly recommend it.
Buy Imposter Syndrome at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher: Doubleday Uk; pub date 11th July 2024 | Hardback | £18.99. Buy at Amazon com.
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