Sirens by Joseph Knox

Crown, 352 pages, $27

Mancunian (hah! I got to use that in a sentence for the second time in my life) author Joseph Knox lists the ABCs of his story, but you soon find out there are a few invisible letters that came before. Surprise!

Set in Manchester, England, “Sirens” is as tough and thoroughly boiled as they come. It’s just a shade off the blackest shade of noir. Its griminess will leave stains on your eyeball. Detective Constable Aiden Waits begins his story telling you he is persona non grata on the force, then he proceeds to tell you why in a flashback.

Waits is sent undercover by a superintendent on the force to uncover a dirty cop. No one can know. If you have read crime books before, you can pretty much guess how this probably won’t work to Waits’ advantage. I would have gotten an exoneration in writing first. Nevertheless.

Waits is supposedly a crooked cop who is hooked on drugs. Actually, the shoe fits. But Waits must appear even worse than he is. The other shoe slips on a little too easily. He infiltrates one of the drug gangs in Manchester. He meets Zain Carver, drug boss and the hub around which many mysteries revolve. He gets in tighter than loose but looser than tight with him and his crew.

Secondarily, he is hired by an MP (member of parliament, not military police) to find his teenage daughter who may — or may not — have run away from home. At any rate, she is not living at any of her official homes. Young Isabelle may have started out in this story as a naive punk, but she turns up with Zain Carver and slips into his life of drugs and booze. Waits doesn’t immediately pack her up and drag her home, however, even though he is quick to find her. He tries to suss out what is going on with her. The warning bells started to ring when her father engaged his services after she had been missing over a month. What kind of a dad is he?

Waits sinks lower and lower into Carver’s world and a potential conflict with another drug gang. When several kids die from using tainted drugs, that becomes another of the mysteries Waits wants to solve. Then there’s the disappearance ten years ago of Carver’s old girlfriend. And who slugged Waits as he left a nightclub? And what for?

Knox piles on the questions and man(chester)fully answers them all. I enjoyed the surprises, the unveilings. Most of all I enjoyed Bug, the transvestite who says turquoise is his natural hair color. He doesn’t show up until way into the story, but his personality and hair shine like a rainbow.

An apology: I read this book on the heels of Walter Mosley’s “Down the River Unto the Sea,” and Mosley’s clear and stylish prose outshone Knox’s from the get-go. I’m sorry, Mr. Knox, to knock luster off your novel because of Mosley’s proximity. Knox's writing is choppy and snipped. It fits the tumbling noirish vibe but takes a little focus to read.