Tom Knox (author)

Portrait of the author Sean Thomas, taken in Scotland, December 2012

Tom Knox is the pseudonym of British writer and journalist^[1] Sean Thomas. Born in Devon, England in 1963, he studied Philosophy at University College London. As a journalist he has written for the Times, the Daily Mail, the Sunday Times, and the Guardian. In 2013 he became a blogger and commentator for the Daily Telegraph in the UK.^[2] When he writes under the name of Tom Knox, he specialises in archaeological and religious thrillers. More recently he has written novels under the pseudonym S K Tremayne.

Writing career

His first thriller, The Genesis Secret, focuses on the Neolithic archaeological site known as Gobekli Tepe in Kurdish 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 (titled also as Cagot or 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]

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, the dark history of human-animal hybridisation and modern Chinese Communism.

His fourth thriller, The Babylon Rite, was published in the UK in 2012, and in the US in 2013. The plot revolves around the mysterious pre-Columbian Moche culture of northern Peru and the infamous Knights Templar.

His fifth thriller, The Deceit, was published in the UK in 2013. Central to the plot are the Satanist Aleister Crowley and the controversial, monotheistic pharaoh Akhenaten. The author claimed, at the time of publication, that the primary speculation in the book had, since the writing, been presented as valid scientific theory.^[12]

As a journalist, he has written, controversially, on the varying benefits of atheism and religious belief.^[13]

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.^[14] The same novel, translated as Ijstweeling, went straight into the Dutch top ten bestseller list, following its publication in the Netherlands in March 2015.

Personal life

Sean Thomas lives in Camden, north London. His ancestry is Cornish; his father is the author D. M. Thomas. He has written three novels under his own name, the second, Kissing England, won the Literary Review's "Bad Sex" award in 2000.^[15] Thomas's fourth book Millions Of Women Are Waiting To Meet You,^[16] was a memoir of his lovelife; it was a best-seller, translated into eight languages, and was the Guardian newspaper's "paperback of the week" in May, 2007.^[17]

Bibliography

As Tom Knox

The Genesis Secret (2009) ISBN 978-0-670-02088-1
The Marks of Cain (2010) ISBN 978-0-670-02191-8
Bible of the Dead (2011, UK) / The Lost Goddess (2012, US) ISBN 978-0-670-02318-9
The Babylon Rite (2012, UK; 2013, US) ISBN 978-0-00-734402-4
The Deceit (2013, UK) ISBN 978-0007459193

As Sean Thomas

Absent Fathers (1996) ISBN 978-0-233-99003-3
Kissing England (2000) ISBN 978-0-00-226140-1
The Cheek Perforation Dance (2002) ISBN 978-0-00-651445-9
Millions of Women are Waiting to Meet You (2006) ISBN 978-0-7475-8556-5

As S K Tremayne

The Ice Twins (2015) ISBN 9780007563036

References

External links

Tom Knox books website