The Source by Sarah Sultoon

 

Marie is a TV journalist working on the production side (editorial, behind the camera, rather than a presenter or reporter) and employed by a major television news channel. She and her team are investigating a sex trafficking ring and have undercover footage of the traffickers selling a young woman. But just as they are about to broadcast the story, the Metropolitan police announce a breakthrough in Operation Andromeda, an investigation into historical sexual abuse in the army. Andromeda has been an enormous scandal, because although the police secured some convictions, many of the suspects escaped prosecution. Now they claim they have further leads which merit reopening the inquiry, and this overshadows and thus scuppers the sex trafficking investigation that Marie and her team have spent months working on.

Meanwhile, in alternate chapters set in the past at the time the abuse was occurring, we meet Carly, the daughter of an alcoholic and neglectful army widow. As far as Carly is concerned, the only good thing in her life is her baby sister Kayleigh. Carly’s older brother, Jason, is a soldier and he provides the family with food and essentials. But soon he helps groom Carly and her friend Rach for the sexual abuse occurring in the barracks.

The Source is told through two timelines - that of Carly experiencing the abuse and that of Marie, who first is investigating the sex trafficking ring, but when that’s superseded by Operation Andromeda, works on the news channel's investigation of that. From the outset it’s clear Marie knows more about the historical sexual abuse within the military than she lets on, and it isn’t long before both stories, that of Marie and that of Carly, converge.

The Source is a very well-written novel. When I first picked it up I assumed it was going to be a more straightforward thriller set in a newsroom, and as a former TV journalist myself, I had mixed feelings about that. Sometimes such stories seem to me to be a little navel-gazing. But the author, Sarah Sultoon, resisted this, and while the story is ostensibly about a journalist, in fact it’s about much more than that. Instead, the topical issues of historical sexual abuse, how society treats victims of such abuse, and the institutional coverups which often occur in such situations, take centre stage. While the issues touched on are sensitive, this isn’t a gratuitous book, but rather a gripping story that will keep the reader turning the page.