True Crime Story: The Times Number One Bestseller

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First comments - I finished this yesterday and at this point in time I have no idea what my rating is going to be. Slightly contradictory however it was a good story which I didn't particularly like from an author I do like... Due to the amount of business to be transacted the Cabinet has 'delegated authority' for some decisions to be taken by Council Officers. The Council's constitution provides a detailed description of these responsibilities. Calling in a Decision

TRUE CRIME STORY is phenomenal. One of the most original thrillers I’ve read in years, perhaps ever. A gritty, twisted murder mystery told in the unique style of a true crime account. I’ve rarely raced through a book so fast....Absolutely remarkable.” - Robyn Young I'm going to keep this short because the promotional blurb tells you all you need to know about the supposed plot. The real story is how it's delivered. The author has come up with a cleverly constructed narrative that blurs the line between fiction & true crime, a genre that has exploded in recent years. The other aspect that I found puzzling and a little disappointing was the characters. It didn't take me long to realise that I didn't really like any of them very much although Zoe's twin sister might be an exception to that. I felt no engagement with them or really the story for quite some time. Given that Aidan Waits is one of my favourite characters of recent years and his stories for me were very well written I found this odd. She came to Great Holm in 1992, with her husband Paul and their young family. Their children attended local play groups and schools. In 2017 Zoe retired from the NHS where she was a Consultant Psychologist working with teams and families in the Midlands helping teenagers remain safely at home, in school and out of care or custody. She lives in Great Holm with her husband who is Chair of the Consortium Milton Keynes and a school governor.

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However I cannot honestly say that I got as much pleasure as I was hoping for reading this. I came to this as a fan of Joe Knox's Aidan Waits stories. However here the narrative style of hopping between contributors was not one I really liked. I also felt that the first third at least was fairly slow. Certainly the pace and tension improved significantly from around halfway through.

Disappearances and vanishings have been plaguing missing persons units at an ever-increasing rate, our population always on the climb and urban labyrinths sprawling themselves further and further. I think we’ve all fantasized, in some capacity at least, of taking up the reigns of an investigation to find the truth behind the disappearance of so many people who end up as nothing more than pictures in the media. This is precisely what Joseph Knox sets out to do by writing himself into his own novel, True Crime Story.Knox starts off by telling us how he met a woman named Evelyn Mitchell at one of his book signings. Also an author, Evie gently dismisses him as another attention-seeking writer whose books focus more on the salacious details of the killers than the victims.

It was a bit of a toll to get through this, as I found it slow and taking too long to get to the point. Every now and then, a suspenseful moment would occur. I kept chugging along in hopes that the ending would be worth my while. It wasn’t.Shaken by revelations of Zoe’s secret life, and stalked by a figure from the shadows, Evelyn turns to crime writer Joseph Knox to help make sense of a case where everyone has something to hide. TRUE CRIME STORY is unnerving, intriguing, superbly constructed and very clever." - Irish Independent Shaken by revelations of Zoe's secret life, and stalked by a figure from the shadows, Evelyn turns to crime writer Joseph Knox to help make sense of a case where everyone has something to hide.

While I applaud that the book made a point to focus on the victim as opposed to the suspect(s)/bad people, I never really cared for Zoe or what happened to her. She was too vapid.I understand that this isn't a phenomenally written book and a lot of things that happen are purposefully in-your-face twists to make the reader jump. BUT WHEN I TELL YOU I WAS JUMPING. True Crime Story by Joseph Knox is an epic thriller everyone will want to put on their must read list! Also, the way the story was told, each interviewee was informed of each other's responses, and those were integrated into the recording, creating a detached, dissonant web of pseudo-conversations which made up the entire story. I wish we had gotten one interview at a time, giving the reader a chance to make their own alliances and assumptions, and perhaps have those assumptions challenged when we heard from a different point of view later on. In a sense I thought this was quite a good story looking at it as a whole. There are numerous twists and turns in the narrative as aspects of Zoe and her friends' lives are gradually revealed. I confess that I thought I knew the answer to this but I was wrong! From that view point I think this is a good story. I have just finished reading True Crime Story. Gripping! It is set at Manchester University in Northern England, and starts innocuously enough with a student disappearance just before the Christmas holidays. Not necessarily a major crime, and the Police are informed, but this is not a standard police procedural, and the missing girl, Zoe Nolan, is not quite the ordinary student she seemed to be at first. She also has an identical twin, also a student at the Uni, which of course complicates things.