Killer stalks cast of Kiwi dating show in Fiona Sussman's new crime novel
Hooked Up is the fifth novel by the award-winning Auckland writer, who previously worked as a GP.
When her friend's daughter appeared on a local reality dating show a few years ago, Fiona Sussman watched "with great interest".
As the manipulated drama played out between the contestants, the Auckland writer felt increasingly disturbed by the "toxicity" of their environment and the sudden public scrutiny they had to contend with.
People going on reality shows to raise their profile are given very little preparation for how drastically their lives change and more attention should be paid to ensuring a "duty of care", the former GP tells RNZ's Saturday Morning.
The initial idea for Sussman's new novel Hooked Up started to form back in 2012, when she read about the suicide of British nurse Jacintha Saldanha, who fell victim to a radio hoax by two Australian DJs.
"I remember thinking, 'Gosh, what lengths do networks, producers and hosts go to in the name of ratings and entertainment?'"
Although not all reality TV is toxic, she says, the format does suddenly catapult people to a level of fame that they are often totally ill-equipped to deal with and that often endangers their mental health.
"You have somebody else shaping the story, the narrative and your personality, and that then remains for posterity online."
In Hooked Up - which features many recognisable Auckland locations - Sussman's characters are "ordinary people", who - under pressure - find themselves suddenly stepping outside the law.
"I really want that sense of familiarity and the reader thinking, 'Gosh, there but for the grace of God go I’."
Sussman never planned to become a crime writer.
Her debut, Shifting Colours (2014), was set in the apartheid South Africa of her childhood in the 1980s, which she describes as "appalling".
The follow-up,The Last Time We Spoke (2016), explores the "underbelly of urban New Zealand" via a home invasion.
When that book won the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel, she was delighted, but also confused.
Later, as a guest at the "phenomenal" Scottish crime-writing festival ‘Bloody Scotland’, Sussman discovered the "amazing breadth of writing" that falls under the banner of 'crime fiction'.
After publishing Addressed to Greta (2020) - a novel about a 30-something woman's search for identity - Sussman tried her hand at intentionally writing a crime novel with The Doctor's Wife (2022).
Although she didn't draw on any of her personal experiences as a GP in that book, she says all her work is suffused with the deep understanding of human nature that working in medicine provides.
"When people are ill, they are really stripped of artifice, and they're often at their most honest and their most raw,” she says. “The hospital gown is a great leveller.
“You get to see human nature in all its guises."
The Doctor's Wife won the 2023 NZ Booklovers Award.
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As a child, Sussman always planned to work with words somehow, but - inspired by the wonderful GP who treated her father's cancer - she felt a "real calling" to study medicine after completing an arts degree.
Partway through med school in South Africa, she met future husband Luigi Sussman - "a dashing Italian doctor, white coat flapping in the wind" - who was just about to immigrate to New Zealand.
"We wrote for a whole year, and then he sent me a ticket and said, 'Come and visit'. He took me off to walk the Milford track.
“I thought I'd arrived in heaven, and decided to stay."
After moving to Auckland in 1989, Sussman finished her medical training and worked as a GP until 2003, when she decided to take a year off to be at home with her kids and write a book.
Twenty-two years on, with five novels to her name, the guilt she feels about leaving the profession is somewhat appeased by ongoing work with The Aotearoa Charity Hospital Trust.
With Luigi, a colorectal surgeon, Sussman founded the philanthropic trust in 2008 to support people in Auckland with life-affecting conditions who have somehow fallen between the cracks of the health system.
"Both of us had been working in very privileged practice populations. New Zealand had been incredibly good to us, and we really wanted to give something back."
Fiona Sussman appears at two book events in November - at Remuera Library on Wednesday the 19th and Matakana Books on Saturday the 22nd.
