If it wasn't for my recent Read What You Own challenge, I probably wouldn't have read True Crime Story [Joseph Knox]. It's been languishing on my TBR every since I bought it and immediately forgot it existed.
It was only when I felt the need for something true-crime related that I looked at it again - I figured the title was certainly a step in the right direction. Realising that it is faux true-crime, one of my favourite subgenres, I dived in right away.
The overall conceit is that the real author of the book is editing this on behalf of a fictional writer friend, who died before completing her investigation into a missing student. She has interviewed all the main players and those interviews are interspersed with her own email conversations with Knox.
The case is that of Zoe, who went missing during a fire evacuation at her student towerblock in Manchester. She is blonde and pretty but far from the ideal 'virginal' missing girl, with an increasingly complex number of secrets that slowly come out. 
The interviews - with her pushy father, her overshadowed twin, her public school boyfriend, her adoring bestie, her choir pal, and several other assorted friends and hangers on - paint a complex picture. The main players disagree with each other, and often dislike each other. This is a cast of unreliable narrators - often reacting defensively to the comments and accusations of others, or revealing more when eventually pushed into it.
There has been a boom in faux true crime recently - helped along by books like Sadie, A Good Girls Guide to Murder, and The Appeal. True Crime Story has a huge amount in common with similar 'fake true crime' story Penance, and holding them up side-by-side, there's not much in it. I liked both equally. Penance is richer in society and culture, but this has more authentic access to the main players. Both deal with the fake writer's motives being questioned and in both cases, I consider those to be the weakest sections of the book. With a little time between reading it and writing this piece, I'd say that True Crime Story has settled in my memory as the flashier, but least substantial of the two.
Where Penance felt like a prestige true-crime documentary, this feels like a sleazy podcast. The twists are meant to be shocking, but are increasingly bizarre. One feels Knox holding the structure of the novel together with his fingertips. As the story descends into French gangland kidnappings, hidden passageways, mysterious watchers, and twins impersonating each other... the whole thing grows increasingly silly. At one point Knox implicates himself, which doesn't make the least sense. By the [SPOILER] entirely predictable murder of the fictional interviewer (who has, of course, just announced her pregnancy) I all but rolled my eyes.
However, this book does (mostly) tie things up with a neat bow. The author knows we crave a satisfying resolution and gives us a comprehensive 'whodunnit' ending.
To my surprise, this book even creeped me out. I am a horror fan, so I'm rarely thrown by much except serious body horror/gore, but several relatively mild elements of this story freaked me out after finishing it late at night. Suddenly my four walls felt a little less safe.
Ultimately, if you like true crime, or even murder mysteries, you will probably enjoy this.
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