Thriller from West Sussex author explores the world of online dating
Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author Fiona Barton enters the world of online dating in her latest thriller. Talking to Strangers is published by Bantam Press.
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00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Art Settler for Sussex Newspapers.
00:06Really lovely to speak to Fiona Barton. Now Fiona, who lives in the Chichester area, has got
00:10a new thriller out, which is coming out in August, and it's called Talking to Strangers,
00:17and it deals with something really fascinating that shouldn't be sinister, but it is the whole
00:22world of online dating. What drew you to that world? What made you want to explore that in the book?
00:30I think it was how ordinary it had become, how mainstream it had become, yet the risks persisted.
00:43I'd met women a few years ago who had started online dating when it was still, you know,
00:50not something that everybody talked about, they felt they were being judged,
00:54and they said they were doing it, and I was just, I was surprised at the risks
01:01they were taking. And those risks are encapsulated in the title, which is
01:06Talking to Strangers, that is the risk, is it? It is. You're putting your trust. Yes, so where, you know,
01:15a long time ago when I was dating, it would have been discos and pubs where you met people,
01:21where you could look them in the eye and know they were real. You know, the stories I've heard,
01:29the investigations that I've looked into, where, you know, people have been scammed and conned and
01:37misled, you know, thinking that they're meeting the love of their life, and it turns out to be
01:44a boiler room in another country, scamming them. So it's for a thriller writer then, clearly.
01:51Exactly, it's food and drink to me. So I like the jeopardy and the hope, you know, people
02:00go into this very genuinely, looking for their life partner, and you know, I'm sure a good deal
02:07of them find them. But lurking around, it's this jeopardy that actually you don't know who you're
02:15talking to. And, you know, the whole talking to strangers as a child. That's fascinating.
02:21And you came into writing with a long background in journalism for national newspapers. Does
02:27a journalist and you survive in the writer? Does that carry over in any way? You've got a
02:32journalist's account? Well, yes, it does. Because how can you shrug off, you know,
02:3930 years of being a reporter, and I wouldn't want to. Because I think what I what the reporter in
02:46me brings to it is observation and short sentences. And, but I had to unload, unlearn a lot of things
02:56when I started. And, you know, as a journalist, you, you tell the story in the opening paragraph.
03:02Yes, that's not great for a thriller, it turns out.
03:09Well, I got to 10,000 words of my first book and thought, I've got nothing left to say.
03:16But I did, I had to give myself permission to invent. I know people think, you know,
03:22that journalists invent all the time, but they don't. And so I still, I ground myself a lot in
03:31experiences I've had people I've talked to. I like to, I like to have my feet on the ground and know
03:38that, you know, that these are the sort of things that people actually do, actually say, I'd be
03:45hopeless at sci fi. Fantastic. We have to write about what you know, don't you? In essence?
03:51Yeah. Well, yeah, you do. I mean,
03:55Or at least use it as a starting point of this.
03:58Exactly. That's it. That's it. Yeah.
04:00Fantastic. Well, the book is Talking to Strangers by Fiona Barton.
04:04Lovely to speak to you, Fiona. Thank you.