The Penguin Podcast is back! Listen Now
The Smiling Man

The Smiling Man

Summary

________

'Gritty as hell. I loved it. A great urban cop thriller' Ian Rankin

From the bestselling author of Sirens, Detective Aidan Waits is on the hunt to find the identity of The Smiling Man.
________

A body has been found on the fourth floor of Manchester's vast and empty Palace Hotel. The man is dead. And he is smiling.

The tags have been removed from his clothes. His teeth have been replaced. Even his fingertips are not his own. Only a patch sewn into his trousers offers any information about him.

Detective Aidan Waits and his unwilling partner, DI Sutcliffe, must piece together the scant clues to identify the stranger. But as they do, Aidan realises that a ghost from his past haunts the investigation. He soon recognises that to discover who the smiling man really is, he must first confront the scattered debris of his own life . . .
________

'Talents such as Knox rarely emerge more than once in a generation. A crime fiction masterpiece' ***** Metro

'Packing a punch from the very first page. You will love The Smiling Man' Jane Harper, author of The Dry

Joseph Knox's first stand-alone novel True Crime Story is coming 17 June 2021

Reviews

  • If you liked Sirens, you will love The Smiling Man. Gritty, noir, and packing a punch from the very first page.
    Jane Harper, author of The Dry

About the author

Joseph Knox

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.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more