Writers Read: Zoë Sharp

Sunday, August 27, 2017

Zoë Sharp

Zoë Sharp is the author of fourteen novels so far, either in the Charlie Fox crime thriller series, standalones or collaborations, as well as moonlighting as an international pet-sitter and yacht crew. When she’s not doing that, she dabbles in self-defence and house renovation. (If she visits don’t tell her to make herself at home or she’s liable to start knocking walls out.)

Sharp's latest novel is Fox Hunter.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Her reply:

I tend to read quite a bit of nonfiction for research, which I prefer to do in print format, as it’s easier to stick Post-It notes to the appropriate pages. Today’s mail brought a paperback edition of Horse Soldiers by Doug Stanton, the story of a small band of Special Forces soldiers who rode to war against the Taliban in Afghanistan on horseback. The time and place of this story appealed to me, as well as the horse involvement. It promises to be a combination of cavalry tactics and modern technological warfare. Invaluable when writing about an ex-soldier like Charlie Fox.

I’m also re-reading an old favourite, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, as I’ve been asked to contribute to an anthology called For The Sake of the Game, which are all stories inspired by Sherlock Holmes. The story has taken shape, but now I need to get my head into the right mind-set. As one of the longer Holmes stories, The Hound of the Baskervilles has been just perfect to inspire me to Get On With It. And the opening chapter, where Holmes and Watson predict the life story and habits of an absent visitor by studying his abandoned walking stick, is classic Conan Doyle.

I’ve been so up to my neck since the beginning of the year that I confess I’ve fallen woefully behind with my reading. I did, however, have the pleasure of reading the latest Rosie Claverton novel, Terror 404, about the abuse of vulnerable adults in supposedly ‘safe’ places. It was an atmospheric and affecting novel that lured me in and kept me turning the pages.

I’m currently feasting on Lee Child’s last Jack Reacher thriller, Night School, which is as gripping and outwardly baffling as always, following Reacher and Frances Neagley as they work their way towards the denouement with their usual mix of logical intelligence and brute force. Always a winning combination.