Imposter Syndrome

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. Agent: Daniel Lazar, Writers House. (Dec.)