Sirens

British author Knox’s impressive debut plunges the reader into the darkest corners of Manchester’s druggy club scene. When David Rossiter, a powerful politician, seeks help tracking down his wayward 17-year-old daughter, Isabelle, now in the orbit of drug kingpin Zain Carver, the police brass select Det. Aidan Waits, a disgraced undercover officer caught tampering with evidence, as the man for the job. Waits must go after Carver and the corrupt officers who keep him in business with little support and only the merest hope of professional and personal redemption. Waits’s youth makes his being so hard-boiled a bit implausible, but Knox sets a dizzying pace and convincingly evokes the murky, unbalanced atmosphere of an empire built around drugs and money with vivid prose. As Waits, himself a drug user, peels back the layers of old cases and past loyalties, the stakes rise for him and several young women in the middle of Manchester’s nightlife maelstrom. The hard-hitting action builds to a bleak, wrenching conclusion because, of course, not everyone can be saved. Agents: Antony Topping and Dan Lazar, Writers House. (Feb.)