ON THE BOOKSHELF: Sarah Sultoon

Join me as we take a look through the bookshelves of our favourite writers, readers and book lovers - today we're talking all things books with Sarah Sultoon.

Sarah was a news journalist for fifteen years, working all over the world with CNN International - from Baghdad to Kabul, Westminster to Washington. She loved her job, but the news business waits for no-one and despite everyone's best efforts, her work became incompatible with family life so she turned her hand to writing. The Source, followed by The Shot, were born - and it won't escape her readers notice that she hasn't deviated much from her past life in her fiction! But as Sarah says, newsrooms lend themselves to thriller writing and are underexploited in general. There are a lot of police and legal procedurals out there, but Sarah knows newsrooms have many of the same ingredients - investigations, scoops, all of which are by definition races against time. And truly authentic and compelling depictions of newsrooms are hard to find.

You can read my review of Sarah's' latest novel here.

What are you reading now?

I am in the middle of Ian Rankin’s A Question of Blood and I turn to Ian Rankin’s back catalogue whenever I am trying to draft something new – I find his Rebus’ series peerlessly instructive. He should have been knighted for services to fellow authors, not least to literature at large, decades ago!

What are you reading next?

Next up is Vladimir by Julia May Jonas.

It has been recommended by a close friend whose tips are consistently brilliant so...

What’s the first book you remember reading?

Hard to say -- I was an avid reader from a really early age. I think the better question – for me – is what book first made a real impression and that was Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor.

I think I read it aged 9 or 10.

An extraordinary book that taught me so much at exactly the right age. I think it should be a curriculum text.

What book made you love reading?

Hmm – again, so hard to say. I was a born reader. The minute I discovered books, I stopped talking! And trust me, I can talk... my parents joke books were the babysitter they never knew existed. I adore losing myself in a book. I much prefer it to film/television (although I love those too.) But I don’t like my imagination being prescribed for me, if that makes sense. I won’t watch a film until I’ve read the book first and got my own picture of it all in my head. 

What book can you always re-read?

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. My favourite book of all time. Whenever I return to it, I am moved in a different, but equally impactful way. 

What book do you think is under-rated?

As above. In terms of Indian fiction, people tend to eulogise Vikram Seth and Arundhati Roy over Rohinton Mistry. Both amazing authors but for me, not quite as transcendental as Mistry. 

What book makes you cry?

As above. And tons of others – The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing, Roll of Thunder Hear by Cry and the sequel Let the Circle Be Unbroken... I could go on.

Bits of the Anne of Green Gables series also make me weep!

Oddly enough I rarely cry in reality. But the waterworks are running in seconds in a fictional context! 

What book makes you laugh?

I recently read Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus which, whilst not a “funny” book per se, made me laugh out loud many times. Her delivery is absolutely peerless. There are some passages in Harlan Coben’s back catalogue – the opening chapter of Stay Close, for example – which, whilst also not a “funny” book by any means, is delivered similarly brilliantly. For me, humour always comes down to the dialogue. Lots of Ian Rankin’s Rebus/Clarke dialogue is also funny even when it is staged in a mortuary. 

What book do you think everybody should read?

Roll of Thunder Hear my Cry – I’m getting repetitive now, aren’t I?! But I truly believe in the lessons of that book. And whilst I didn’t “enjoy” it per se, I do think the lessons of Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women are critical in this day and age. Novel-length non-fiction representations of female sexuality and desire are pushing boundaries that really should never have existed in the first place. 

What’s the last book you wrote?

The last book I wrote is coming out in January 2023. It’s the start of a series of thrillers featuring an investigative journalist (rather than detective or lawyer!) 

A political cluedo called Dirt, the book is set on a kibbutz in Israel in 1996. Cub reporter Jonny Murphy digs up more than just secrets when a body in chicken house number one turns up the heat under an age-old political conflict. I am hoping the reader gains a completely new perspective on the conflict itself whilst enjoying an alternative spin on the traditional whodunnit!

What are you writing next?

I am just about to type the words The End on the sequel to Dirt (excuse me while I hyperventilate!) With the working title She Disappeared, it takes reporter Jonny Murphy to Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2001. A headless torso has washed up on the beach in La Plata – a gruesome echo of two decades earlier when the tide brought home hundreds of mutilated bodies thrown from planes during the Dirty War. They were called flights of death. Their passengers were known as the Disappeared. And Jonny is fighting to keep their memories alive. 

You can find out more about Sarah here:

https://orendabooks.co.uk/authors/sarah-sultoon