What is the title of your latest release?
FREEBOURNE
What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
A thinking-reader’s thriller set in an idyllic English town of the near future, with a twist that’s never been done before in fiction.
After learning of his wife's affair with his best friend and business partner, divorced and unemployed MindTech entrepreneur Dr Harry Coulson arrives in the idyllic English town of Freebourne, looking to start a new life. But any hopes of quietly picking up the pieces of his broken world are shattered when he steps off the train to discover the body of a young woman lying in the snow. It's almost as if she'd been left there for him to find.
Harry does everything he can to help. But as a stranger arriving on the night Freebourne witnesses its first murder in over a century, he not only becomes a suspect in the woman's killing but finds himself caught in a deadly game between science, faith, and free will - in a secret far darker and more terrifying than anything he could have imagined.
How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
A lot of thrillers are set in big, busy, bustling metropolises. I wanted to set FREEBOURNE somewhere completely different – a little picturesque English town, a little bit like the one I grew up in. It allowed me to paint this close-knit community filled with quirky characters all hiding their own secrets, but where the pace of life is much slower, where not much usually happens, and where the arrival of a stranger has a huge impact. That it’s also set in the near-future, and features advanced technology that brings with it colossal potential and also colossal danger, made it a wonderfully fun juxtaposition to play with.
Would you hang out with your heroine in real life?
There are probably two heroines in FREEBOURNE – Lauren Fontaine, a brilliantly intelligent neuroscientist, philosopher and human rights activist; and River, a Dungeons & Dragons-playing hippy who owns Freebourne’s fabulously eccentric Rainbow Café – and in both Harry more than meets his match. They were a lot of fun to write, and it wouldn’t be a dull day.
What are three words that describe your hero?
Kind, clever, but traumatized.
What’s something you learned while writing this book?
That reality can be scarier than fiction. Behind what I hope is a page-turning thriller, FREEBOURNE is a cautionary tale about the extremes of populism and the frightening pace of technology without any safeguards. When I started writing, Joe Biden was President and Grok hadn’t been invented. Let’s see where this takes us.
Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I’m pretty meticulous. I plot most of the story out in advance, though some characters and turns of events do surprise me as I go and take me in interesting directions, and that’s part of the fun. As for the language, if I’m not happy with a sentence, I don’t move on until it works for me. Then I do the same at the end of every paragraph. And then every chapter so it all flows together. It’s quite laborious but does mean fewer big edits at the end.
What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
Like Lauren, who is the daughter of a French chef and it shows, I love to cook – anything from all over the world. Can’t beat a good old Sunday roast though, and I’m very particular about the potatoes being crispy on the outside and fluffy inside, properly parboiled and chuffed before roasting in goose fat. It’s very difficult to go out for a roast!
Describe your writing space/office!
I have a study on the top floor of my house, surrounded by books and art, and with a big window looking out on the garden and the neighbors’ gardens below, where you can often see parakeets swooping from tree to tree. It’s usually a calm place to work. Occasionally, my 3-year-old son Alexander comes in and trashes it!
Who is an author you admire?
My late friend and mentor Jill Paton Walsh, author of the wonderful philosophical novel Knowledge of Angels, and of several murder mysteries. I had the good fortune of interviewing her when I was Literature Editor of Varsity, the Cambridge University student newspaper, and she gave me some advice on my own writing that has stayed with me ever since. If you want to say something meaningful about the world, you should smuggle it in a murder mystery. And so I did.
Is there a book that changed your life?
The Lord of the Rings. It was the first adult fiction I was read as a child. And it opened up my world to language and story.
Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published). Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
I was totally over the moon. I’ve always written since I was a kid. Just short stories at first, on little scraps of paper, then longer ones, and novels that never went anywhere. Then I went into journalism and wrote a lot for newspapers and magazines, but fiction has always been my first love. Having my debut novel coming out is a dream come true and I’m very grateful to the fantastic team at Roundfire Books for taking a chance on this first-time author.
What’s your favorite genre to read?
Usually literary fiction. I also enjoy thrillers, sci-fi and fantasy.
What’s your favorite movie?
Withnail and I. Best of the century. If you haven’t seen it yet, I envy you; you’re in for a treat. If you have seen it, you might recognize an affectionate homage in FREEBOURNE.
What is your favorite season?
Summer. Anyone who says otherwise just wants to be edgy.
How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
A big party, or a nice restaurant, either way lots of wine. If you don’t remember your birthday, you didn’t age, right?
What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
The Last of Us. No, you’re crying.
What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
I enjoy cooking, and eating, cuisine from all over the world, so this is a really tough one. Could be Italian, French, Mexican, Indian, Malaysian, British. By a knife-edge, as I encounter it a bit less often, I’ll say Greek. My Greek Cypriot friend Tony recently taught me to cook Afelia and it’s one of my favorite dinner party dishes now.
What do you do when you have free time?
I haven’t given up my day jobs in the media and politics, and I’ve got a young family, so there isn’t much free time. I’d like to say I write in my free time, but that doesn’t always go to plan. I like music festivals, films, travelling, RPG and strategy computer games, and horse riding. I like walking, and pubs. Sometimes I combine them both into a pub crawl.
What can readers expect from you next?
I’m working on another speculative novel, again with what I hope is quite an original concept, going further into the future this time. Something a bit dystopian. But it’s very early days, and I’ve just had my second child, Eddie, so time is short. But I promise to finish it before George R R Martin finishes The Winds of Winter.
After learning of his wife’s affair with his best friend and business partner, divorced and unemployed MindTech entrepreneur Dr Harry Coulson arrives in the idyllic English town of Freebourne, looking to start a new life. But any hopes of quietly picking up the pieces of his broken world are shattered when he steps off the train to discover the body of a young woman lying in the snow. It's almost as if she'd been left there for him to find. Harry does everything he can to help. But as a stranger arriving on the night Freebourne witnesses its first murder in over a century, he not only becomes a suspect in the woman's killing but finds himself caught in a deadly game between science, faith, and free will — in a secret far darker and more terrifying than anything he could have imagined.
Thriller Serial Killer | Science Fiction Suspense/Thriller | Mystery [ Roundfire Books, On Sale: November 1, 2025, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9781803419251 / eISBN: 9781803419589 ]
Salman Shaheen is a British politician, journalist and novelist. He has written for the Guardian, New Statesman, New Internationalist, and Times of India, and frequently comments on politics and economics on TV and radio. His exclusive exposes on corporate tax avoidance have made front-page news in the Observer and have been picked up by the FT and the Telegraph.
Salman launched Grow for the Future, the UK’s first-ever policy to transform wasteland into places for urban kids in deprived areas to grow food and learn about sustainability and biodiversity. The policy, initiated in the London Borough of Hounslow, has been backed by the UK government and championed by Downton Abbey’s Jim Carter OBE. He also partnered with Jamie Oliver to launch the celebrity chef's first-ever food education programme directly targeted at primary schools to tackle childhood obesity.
Passionate about preserving green spaces, Salman helped lead the successful and nationally prominent campaign to save Park Road Allotments – a century-old wildlife haven established to feed wounded soldiers returning from the First World War – from being bulldozed by one of Britain’s richest landowners, the Duke of Northumberland.
Born in Norwich in 1984, Salman graduated with a Double First in Social & Political Sciences from Jesus College, Cambridge, before going on to complete the Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia. He now lives in Brentford, West London.
Salman is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
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