I’m thrilled to welcome you today to my stop on the blog tour for powerful political thriller Dirt by Sarah Sultoon. Thank you to Anne Cater and Orenda Books for giving me the opportunity to read and review this outstanding book.
About the book:
This is no utopia…
1996. Northern Israel. Lola leaves an unhappy home life in England for the fabled utopian life of a kibbutz, but this heavily guarded farming community on the Arab-Israeli border isn’t the idyll it seems, and tensions are festering.
Hundreds of miles away, in the Jerusalem offices of the International Tribune newspaper, all eyes are on Israel’s response to a spate of rocket attacks from Lebanon, until cub reporter Jonny Murphy gets a tip from a mysterious source that sends him straight into the danger zone.
When the body of an Arab worker is discovered in the dirt of the kibbutz chicken house, it triggers a series of events that puts Lola and the whole community in jeopardy, and Jonny begins to uncover a series of secrets that put everything at risk, as he begins to realise just how far some people will go to belong…
About the author:
Sarah Sultoon is a journalist and writer, whose work as an international news executive at CNN has taken her all over the world, from the seats of power in both Westminster and Washington to the frontlines of Iraq and Afghanistan. Of Jewish and Indian descent, she has extensive experience in conflict zones, winning three Peabody awards for her work on the war in Syria, an Emmy for her contribution to the coverage of Europe’s migrant crisis in 2015, and a number of Royal Television Society gongs. When not reading or writing she can usually be found somewhere outside, either running, swimming or throwing a ball for her three children and dog while she imagines what might happen if…
Her debut thriller The Source is currently in production with Lime Pictures, was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger, won the Crime Fiction Lover Debut Thriller Award, was a Capital Crime Book Club pick and a number-one bestseller on Kindle.
My Review:
Dirt is the stunning new political thriller by former CNN international news executive Sarah Sultoon. It’s a devastatingly powerful and thought provoking read that had me gripped from beginning to end. A compulsive page turner of a read this is a book that, just like the author’s previous two novels, evoked an intense emotional response in me that lingered long after the final page had been turned.
Beginning in 1996, the book starts as Lola decides to leave an unhappy home life in England for what she hopes will be the utopian life of a kibbutz in Northern Israel. But as tensions simmer beneath the surface, it soon becomes apparent that not everything is quite as idyllic as it seems in this heavily guarded farming community…
Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away in the Jerusalem offices of the International Tribune newspaper, all eyes are on Israel’s response to a series of rocket attacks from Lebanon. Here we meet reporter Jonny Murphy, who receives a tip from an unknown source that sends him directly into the danger zone, near to the kibbutz where Lola is living.
And then the body of an Arab worker is discovered on the kibbutz that soon puts Lola and the whole community in danger. As Jonny begins to uncover secrets that soon put everyone and everything at risk, his eyes are opened to exactly how far some people are willing to go to belong…
Sarah Sultoon’s writing is as sharp as ever as this taut, chilling political thriller is brought vividly to life. With a sometimes dark and unsettling storyline, Dirt is a complex thriller that reveals its shocking secrets slowly, the story twisting this way and that in a tale that is as authentic as it is exciting. I found myself completely invested in the characters of Lola and Jonny as their lives became intricately entangled, two people drawn to each other by the very different but still as damaging horrors of what took them away from their past lives and brought them to Israel in the first place.
Dirt is a well paced and exciting thriller with Sarah Sultoon, as always, drawing from her considerable experience as a CNN executive to deliver a powerful and intense political thriller that drew me in from the very first page and refused to let go until the last, exhilarating page had been read.
A powerfully written and hard hitting read, Dirt is a book I honestly can’t recommend highly enough. As with this author’s previous work, Dirt is a book that’s written with an integrity and raw honesty that completely takes your breath away. Sarah Sultoon‘s writing just keeps on getting better and better and I can’t wait to read whatever she comes up with next.
Dirt by Sarah Sultoon is available to purchase now:
Cal Turner Reviews 
Thanks for the blog tour support x
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