Imposter Syndrome
A Novel
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
"A thousand-mile-an-hour thriller in which you’re never sure who’s predator or prey. It left my head spinning. Immensely enjoyable!" — Stuart Turton, bestselling author of The Last Murder at the End of the World and The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
From the #1 international bestselling author of True Crime Story comes a gripping new novel of a con-artist who is dragged into the lavish London underbelly and must use his lifetime of unique skills to make it out.
On the run from his shady past, Lynch has just arrived in London, still looking over his shoulder to make sure he isn't being followed. His phone is dead, he has no money, no contacts, no one at all. Until he runs into a young woman named Bobbie who mistakes him for her brother, Heydon Pierce, who disappeared five years ago without a trace.
At Bobbie's suggestion, Lynch goes to the Pierce family home, posing as Heydon to try and con some money out of them. But far from tricking them, his subterfuge is instantly discovered. He strikes the devil’s bargain with them – their silence for his cooperation in finding out what really happened to Heydon.
But Lynch’s investigation goes too deep and uncovers the fact that Heydon Pierce was tangled up with some dangerous and powerful people in London. Everyone has their own motives to keep Heydon well buried in the past. In such a conspiracy of mirrors, there’s only one thing Lynch know for certain: the only person he can trust is himself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Knox (True Crime Story) delivers a tense if overstuffed thriller about a con man's entanglement with a wealthy family. When swindler Lynch arrives at Heathrow Airport after fleeing from Paris, he's nearly knocked over by heiress Bobbie Pierce, who mistakes him for her missing brother, Heydon. Stunned by the resemblance, Bobbie sends Lynch to her mother, a former starlet, who hires Lynch to find Heydon by impersonating him. First, Lynch meets with a gangster to whom Heydon owed millions of dollars and hands over the money (provided by the Pierces) in return for a locked briefcase Heydon provided as collateral. Then Lynch becomes a target for thugs seeking the case's mysterious contents. Meanwhile, Lynch learns that one of Heydon's siblings drowned several years earlier, possibly at Heydon's hands, and he witnesses a murder. As Lynch scrambles to figure out what, exactly, the Pierces want from him, readers are likely to feel similarly confused—Knox continues heaping new characters and subplots onto the narrative until it threatens to collapse. Lynch is a memorable protagonist—one part Tom Ripley, two parts Frank Abignale Jr.—but he's let down by the kitchen-sink plotting. This is a mixed bag.
