Joseph Knox departs from his internationally bestselling Aidan Waits series to pen TRUE CRIME STORY, an inventive and wildly creative thriller about the missing girls who don’t come back.

“In the early hours of Saturday, December 17, 2011, Zoe Nolan, a nineteen-year-old University of Manchester student, walked out of a party taking place in the shared accommodation where she had been living for three months. She was never seen again.” So begins the manuscript sent to Knox by his friend and fellow author, Evelyn Mitchell. Over lengthy conversations about genre and craft, they long shared many thoughts on the popularity of serial killers in crime fiction and the genre's wayward focus on the killers rather than the victims. But even Knox knows that while Zoe’s story is certainly sad, it is far from sensational, as “girls [go] missing all the time.” So when Evelyn becomes obsessed with the story following an unexpected cancer diagnosis, Knox does his best to be supportive, even when his own career takes off and he loses touch with her, save a few emails here and there.

"The mystery at the heart of the novel is excellent, ripped from the headlines, but it’s Knox’s characters and the things they inadvertently reveal about themselves and one another that make it so riveting."

On June 25, 2018, an email arrives in Knox’s inbox with the subject line “True Crime Story” and a collection of interviews between Evelyn and Zoe’s immediate family, friends and acquaintances. For almost a year, Evelyn had tracked down everyone who knew, cared about and was involved with Zoe, interviewing anyone who agreed to speak with her. Rather than unpacking a typical missing-girl story, she found something much more shocking: a complex, contradictory picture of bitter disappointments, an unloving boyfriend, unrelenting parental pressure, a destructive, competitive sister relationship, and a mysterious “Shadow Man” who may or may not have been stalking Zoe before her disappearance.

By March 25, 2019, Zoe remains missing, Evelyn herself is deceased, and Knox has taken up the reins of her investigation, finishing the epic, messy breakdown of the life and disappearance of Zoe Nolan. TRUE CRIME STORY, written as a collection of interviews, emails and fictional statements from both Knox and his publisher, Sourcebooks, is the result of his and Evelyn’s interviews, fictionalized but made to look like a true account.

Zoe was a talented singer whose father raised her to be famous, often pitting her and her twin, Kimberly, against one another by highlighting Zoe’s numerous talents and more or less ignoring Kimberly. Following a horrible audition, Zoe attempts suicide and ends up attending the University of Manchester, which is where Kimberly had intended to make a fresh start as herself, not as the lesser Zoe. Already their relationship as college classmates is off to a tense start when Zoe finds an obsessive best friend, Liu; a mediocre boyfriend, Andrew; and a bright-eyed, naive friend, Fintan. Rounding out their friend group is Jai, Andrew’s roommate.

Over the first three months of the semester, the six young men and women drink heavily, party at clubs, complain about classwork and clash with their fellow classmates. Through it all, mysterious and alarming events plague Zoe: the theft of her undergarments, the release of a sex tape, a burgeoning drug problem, a potentially haunted apartment and a never-ending assault on the girls’ apartment buzzer.

As interviews with the gang --- as well as Zoe’s parents, the detectives assigned to the case and other supporting characters --- unfold, Knox and Evelyn uncover a lot of hidden resentments and betrayals, each more shocking than the last, making Zoe’s disappearance not only understandable, but almost inevitable. Knox the author (not to be confused with Knox the character) not only dishes out mind-blowing twists and turns, he positions each interview against the others, making for an utterly unputdownable conversation between several unlikable, unreliable, clearly biased characters, each desperate to put their own spin on Zoe’s story and be the main character. This is a totally unconventional, highly ambitious thriller, one that Knox meets with cleverness, ingenuity and a whole lot of control over his uncontrollable cast.

TRUE CRIME STORY is a tricky book to summarize. The unusual format is initially difficult to digest and requires a suspension of disbelief to work. But when it does, it becomes like nothing you’ve ever read before in all the best ways. The mystery at the heart of the novel is excellent, ripped from the headlines, but it’s Knox’s characters and the things they inadvertently reveal about themselves and one another that make it so riveting. Knox has a clear talent for voice, to the point that each character is so distinct that I didn’t even need to read the names to know who was talking. But more than that is his ability to put one character’s story up against another’s and force readers to determine who is telling the truth or who has more to lose from the truth being revealed. Who you side with says just as much about you as it does Knox’s characters; in a wide, diverse cast, he never fails to remind us that we, too, are a cog in the machine, each with our own biases and perceptions.

I’d recommend going into this one completely blind. To know too much would be a disservice to yourself as a reader, but also to the clever construction of Knox’s book and the aim of this “true crime” story. The mechanism won’t work for everyone, but if you loved the format of DAISY JONES & THE SIX and the thrillers of Alice Feeney, you’re sure to find a new favorite in TRUE CRIME STORY.