Death Flight by Sarah Sultoon

Today I'm sharing my review for Death Flight, the second novel featuring reporter Jonny Murphy, by Sarah Sultoon for my stop on the blog tour. As with her previous books, it's a hard hitter. Big thanks to Anne Cater at Random Things Tours for inviting me and to the publisher for my review copy. 

The Blurb

Cub reporter Jonny Murphy is in Buenos Aires interviewing families of victims of Argentina’s Dirty War, when a headless torso washes up on a city beach, thrusting him into a shocking investigation with harrowing echoes from the past…

Argentina. 1998. Human remains are found on a beach on the outskirts of Buenos Aires – a gruesome echo of when the tide brought home dozens of mutilated bodies thrown from planes during Argentina’s Dirty War. Flights of death, with passengers known as The Disappeared.

International Tribune reporter Jonny Murphy is in Buenos Aires interviewing families of the missing, desperate to keep their memory alive, when the body turns up. His investigations with his companion, freelance photographer Paloma Glenn, have barely started when Argentina's simmering financial crisis explodes around them.

As the fabric of society starts to disintegrate and Argentine cities burn around them, Jonny and Paloma are suddenly thrust centre stage, fighting to secure both their jobs and their livelihoods.

But Jonny is also fighting something else, an echo from his own past that he'll never shake, and as it catches up with him and Paloma, he must make choices that will endanger everything he knows…

Death Flight is published by Orenda Books and comes out on 29th February 2024.

My Review

I was completely wowed by The Shot by Sarah Sultoon - it made my top three books of 2022, so was really keen to read something else by her. I missed the blog tour for Dirt, the first book featuring Jonny Murphy so caught up with  that recently before starting this one. 

After being based in Israel for the International Tribune in the first book, in Death Flight we find Jonny now in Argentina, having spent a year living in Buenos Aires, although he hasn't learned much of the language. He is working alongside photographer Paloma who puts him to shame with her fluent Spanish. They are working on a story about Argentina's financial crisis but it's all quite dry stuff. So the news of a body found on the outskirts of the city has caught their interest. Especially as the condition of the corpse is reminiscent of the bodies dropped from the so called Death Flights, 'los Vuelos de Muerte' of Argentina's Dirty War, which ended 15 years previously. It's a story Jonny can't resist following, a decision he might come to regret, if he lives that long...

Jonny is easy to like. He's keen to make a name for himself at the International Tribune, eager to follow the story. He has a conscience though, a strong sense of right and wrong, and of what should and shouldn't be reported. But he carries a lot of sadness and grief, after things that happened in his childhood, and during the last book, all of which is recapped here, so don't worry if you haven't yet read Dirt. I say yet, because you should! Anyway, as a result of all that, there is pretty much only one person in the world he trusts, and it isn't Paloma. Their relationship is an interesting one. They need each other - her pictures could  raise a piece of journalism to a whole other level, whilst his ability to sell a story means she gets paid. They work well together and care about each other, but they don't feel like a team all the time, there is definitely tension under the surface, especially from Jonny towards Paloma. But I enjoyed getting to know her. 

I knew woefully little about Argentina's Dirty War and found this book, whilst a work of fiction, very enlightening. I knew from the previous books I was likely to be educated, and I'm so glad I was, although it was a terrible time with thousands of people of all ages disappearing, and there are  some truly heart breaking moments in the book that reflect this. I found Jonny and Paloma meeting with the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, the Mothers of the Disappeared, identified by their white headscarves, who met every single week in the square from which they take their name, very affecting, but loved that the strength of these women comes through the pages. There is also a relatively short scene where they come across an elderly man doing his best to care for countless young children whose parents had disappeared. He had very little but did what he could for these children. I found that particular scene very moving. 

The book is fast moving with a palpable sense of rising tension as it becomes clear that Jonny's choice to pursue the story of the headless corpse has not gone down well with someone, and he risks more than his reputation by pursuing it. But he is a dogged, determined young man and Paloma, along with the reader, gets swept along with him. And all of this is happening against the backdrop of the exploding, or perhaps imploding, financial crisis in the country. There were moments I found I was unconsciously holding my breath, it's certainly exciting. 

Death Flight is a brilliantly written, hard hitting and fast moving novel. Uncomfortable to read in places, but truly worth it - it's impactful, as well as educational. Please do check this one out. 

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. 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 … Her debut thriller The Source is currently in production with Lime Pictures, and was a Capital Crime Book Club pick and a number one bestseller on Kindle. The Shot (2022) and Dirt (2023) followed, with multiple award longlistings, including the CWA Daggers. Sarah currently works for Channel 4 News and lives in London.

The Descent by Paul E Hardisty

Today I'm sharing my review of the powerful and hard hitting new novel by Paul E Hardisty, The Descent, the prequel to last year's memorable The Forcing, as part of the blog tour. Big thanks to Anne Cater at Random Things Tours for the invitation and to the publisher, Orenda Books, for my review copy of the book. The Descent comes out on 29th February.

The Blurb

A young man and his young family set out on a perilous voyage across a devastated planet to uncover the origin of the events that set the world on its course to disaster…

Kweku Ashworth is a child of the cataclysm, born on a sailboat to parents fleeing the devastation in search for a refuge in the Southern Ocean. Growing up in a world forever changed, his only connection to the events that set the world on its course to disaster were the stories his step-father, now long-dead, recorded in his manuscript, The Forcing.

But there are huge gaps in the story that his mother, still alive but old and frail, steadfastly refuses to speak of, even thirty years later. When he discovers evidence that his mother has tried to cover up the truth, he knows that it is time to find out for himself.

Determined to learn what really happened during his mother's escape from the concentration camp to which she and Kweku's father were banished, and their subsequent journey halfway around the world, Kweku and his young family set out on a perilous voyage across a devastated planet. What they find will challenge not only their faith in humanity, but their ability to stay alive.

My Review

Last year's The Forcing presented us with a near future when the world is in chaos. From the details in the blurb for The Descent I was confused how it was being marketed as the  prequel to that. But Paul Hardisty has done something clever here - given us both a prequel and a sequel within the same novel, which I loved. We find out what led to the events in The Forcing and the aftermath of them. You could read and enjoy this without having read The Forcing as it has plenty to say but for a more rounded reading experience and fuller picture I would suggest you start there. 

At the end of The Forcing, David Ashworth and his family arrived in Australia and decided to settle there. Some thirty years on this is still where we find his wife, his sons Kweku and Lewis, and their families. Events at their homestead encourages Kweku to take his family and head back out into the seas to explore what remains of the world and to discover some of his history. It is not an easy journey... We also hear from a woman calling herself 'Sparkplug' and she has a horrifying and shocking story to tell...

Through Kweku's journey we discover what is left of the world and it's a sad situation. There has been so much natural devastation, war, sickness, infertility, hunger, riots, looting and death. We humans have destroyed so much of the world, it's utterly heartbreaking. 

Through Sparkplug's transmissions we learn how things came to be this way. She was there. And it is her story that is truly terrible. It begins in an alternative February 2024. For a large group of powerful businessmen making money, and as much of it as possible, is all that matters. And they are leading the way across the world, influencing how people think, how they behave. For them, behaving appallingly is nothing if it turns a profit. Politicians are weak at best, corrupt at worst. Fear, illness and poverty become the norm. So, it's an alternative, parallel world but it's frightening how much of her story rings true. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, the gap gets wider. Sound familiar? And in the process, the world is being destroyed. 

Forty years on, the Alpha Omega group are still active in places, still living in luxury in small pockets of the world. Reality for normal people, however, is very different as Kweku discovers. Food is in short supply, crime is rife, people are desperate. However, there is hope. Successful communities have grown up, where people are working in harmony with each other and with nature. Although living in some of these communities also means a price to pay, as the family discovers, in one memorable place. 

I was lucky enough to hear Paul Hardisty speak at the Bloody Scotland festival, together with two former journalists in a session entitled 'Ripped from the Headlines'. All three had turned to fiction in the hope people would start to listen in a way they don't when simply presented with facts. Paul is a respected environmental scientist who knows what he's talking about and I was really struck by his passion. This book, and The Forcing before it, might be fiction but they are firmly rooted in reality, facts and science. This could so easily be our future, and certainly our grandchildren's future. This should be a wake up call for us. We should be doing what we can individually to help the planet - I don't subscribe to the 'well, the planet's dying anyway so it doesn't matter if I recycle/reduce my food waste/buy second hand or whatever because the planet's already done' school of thought. If we all act mindlessly like that, our world will be definitely be destroyed. But alongside all of that, and more important, we need to be lobbying the people in power - councils, governments, leaders - to take affirmative action. I know there are a lot of issues going on in the world just now that need to be seriously addressed but this has to be one of them. 

I don't have the right words to describe this book, or enough of them. A novel for our time, The Descent has plenty to say about climate damage, greed, power and corruption, but does so in an engaging thriller full of tension and heartstopping moments. Please don't let anything I've said above make you think this isn't an exciting read, because it absolutely is. I just believe it's a very important one too. It will easily be one of my books of the year and I hope you will give it a try. 

The Author

Canadian Paul E Hardisty has spent 25 years working all over the world as an engineer, hydrologist and environmental scientist. He has roughnecked on oil rigs in Texas, explored for gold in the Arctic, mapped geology in Eastern Turkey (where he was befriended by PKK rebels), and rehabilitated water wells in the wilds of Africa. He was in Ethiopia in 1991 as the Mengistu regime fell, and was bumped from one of the last flights out of Addis Ababa by bureaucrats and their families fleeing the rebels. In 1993 he survived a bomb blast in a café in Sana’a. Paul is a university professor and CEO of the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS). The first four novels in his Claymore Straker series, The Abrupt Physics of Dying, The Evolution of Fear, Reconciliation for the Dead and Absolution all received great critical acclaim and The Abrupt Physics of Dying was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger and Telegraph Thriller of the Year. The Forcing (2023) was a SciFi Now Book of the Month. Paul is a sailor, a private pilot, keen outdoorsman, and lives in Western Australia.


Be sure to check out the rest of the tour!