Joseph Knox Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Interview

Joseph Knox discusses his sophomore book, The Smiling Man, and how the main protagonist has evolved over the course of his first two novels.

What was your inspiration for writing The Smiling Man, and what can you tell us about the true crime that the book is based on?

The real case that inspired The Smiling Man is known as Tamam Shud, or the Somerton Man. It refers to a man who traveled to a small town in Australia by untraceable means and was found dead, the victim of a suspected poisoning, in 1948. To this day, he's never been identified, and the bewildering circumstances of his death have never been explained. There's almost too much to go into, but those circumstances include a personalized book, an unbreakable code, and an ominous message sewn into the man's clothing, Tamam Shud, which translates from Persian as "ended" or "finished."

How did you go about bringing a case from 1940s Australia to modern-day Manchester? Do you have theories about what really happened to the Somerton Man?

What spoke to me about the case was the man's lack of identity. Without giving too much away, in both the real-life case and the adapted one I used for The Smiling Man, the victim seems to have discarded or intentionally obliterated his own identity. Aidan Waits, my protagonist, is a man who lost his identity at a young age when his mother gave him up for adoption. As Aidan ...