‘Next big name’ in crime writing to speak at library

SKY Arts Writer of the Year, ‘the next big name in crime fiction’, Joseph Knox, will be talking about his work and signing copies of his new thriller, The Smiling Man, at Middleton Junction Library at 2pm on Wednesday March 14.

Joseph Knox was born and raised in and around Stoke and Manchester, where he worked in bars and bookshops before moving to London.

He describes himself as ‘running, writing and reading compulsively’.

His debut novel Sirens was a bestseller and Waterstones Thriller of the Month.

The Smiling Man is the second in his DC Aidan Waits series.

‘Disconnected from his history and careless of his future, Detective Aidan Waits has resigned himself to the night shift.

‘An endless cycle of meaningless emergency calls and lonely dead ends. Until he and his partner, Detective Inspector Peter ‘Sutty’ Sutcliffe, are summoned to The Palace, a vast disused hotel in the centre of a restless, simmering city. There they find the body of a man. He is dead. And he is smiling.’

Sirens and The Smiling Man are well-written, compulsive reading, dark, gritty and menacing.

Entry for the talk is £2, including refreshments and redeemable against the cost of a signed book.

Tickets are obtainable from any library.