Writing career
His first thriller, The Genesis Secret, focuses on the Neolithic archaeological site known as Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, which Knox visited as a journalist in 2006. [3] The book speculates on the genetic and sociological origins of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, with particular attention to the trait of sacrifice. Noteworthy for several exceptionally gruesome episodes, it was an international bestseller, [4] [5] [6] and has so far been translated into 21 languages. [7] The novel provoked controversy when the German Archaeology Institute complained that both a newspaper article and the book were based on "a falsified version of an interview with [chief archaeologist] Klaus Schmidt", which they argued constituted "a distortion of the scientific work of the German Archaeological Institute". [8]
His second thriller, The Marks of Cain was published in 2010. Centring on the little-known Cagot community who lived in the Basque Country, and the troubled history of the German empire in Namibia, it too was an international bestseller. In Germany, the ebook version, published under the title Cagot, was notable for its experimental use of interactivity and alternate reality games. [9]
The Cagots were a persecuted minority found in the west of France and northern Spain: the Navarrese Pyrenees, Basque provinces, Béarn, Aragón, Gascony and Brittany. Their name differed by province and the local language: Cagots, Gézitains, Gahets, and Gafets in Gascony; Agotes, Agotak, and Gafos in Basque country; Capots in Anjou and Languedoc; and Cacons, Cahets, Caqueux, and Caquins in Brittany. Evidence of the group exists back as far as AD 1000.
The Basque Country, officially the Basque Autonomous Community is an autonomous community in northern Spain. It includes the Basque provinces of Álava, Biscay, and Gipuzkoa.
Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in southern Africa. Its western border is the Atlantic Ocean; it shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and east. Although it does not border Zimbabwe, less than 200 metres of the Zambezi River separates the two countries. Namibia gained independence from South Africa on 21 March 1990, following the Namibian War of Independence. Its capital and largest city is Windhoek, and it is a member state of the United Nations (UN), the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the African Union (AU), and the Commonwealth of Nations.
A third book, titled Bible of the Dead (or The Lost Goddess outside the United Kingdom) was published in March 2011 in the UK, and in the US in February 2012, [10] [11] and focuses on the Khmer Rouge, while taking in the cave paintings of France, and modern Chinese Communism.
The Khmer Rouge was the name popularly given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) and by extension to the regime through which the CPK ruled in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. The name had originally been used in the 1950s by Norodom Sihanouk as a blanket term for the Cambodian left.
In 2015, under the pseudonym S K Tremayne, he published a novel called The Ice Twins , about a London couple who lose a child, one of identical twins, and thereafter move to a remote island in Scotland. At this point the parents begin to suspect they have misidentified the surviving child. The Ice Twins became a Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller in February 2015. [12]
The Ice Twins is a 2015 psychological thriller, written by S.K. Tremayne. Screenwriter Isaac Adamson has adapted the novel for a movie.
The same novel, translated as IJstweeling, went into the Dutch top ten bestseller list, following its publication in the Netherlands in March 2015. In May 2015, under the title Eisige Schwestern, the same book entered the Spiegel bestseller list, in Germany; the book went on to spend fifteen weeks in the German top ten. [13] In September 2015, The Ice Twins, in paperback form, became a number one Sunday Times bestseller in the UK. [14] As of December 2016, The Ice Twins has been translated into 29 languages, and has been a bestseller in various territories: including Brazil, France, Denmark, Finland and South Korea.
His second S K Tremayne novel, The Fire Child, became a top ten bestseller in Germany in January 2017, under the title Stiefkind. [15] The same new novel entered the UK's Sunday Times bestseller top ten in February 2017. A third novel, Just Before I Died, was published in August 2018.
In January 2019, The Ice Twins became a Nielsen Silver Award-winner, for selling 250,000 copies in the UK. [16]
