Scala Radio Book Club: One Last Secret by Adele Parks
One last secret... would you kill to keep it?
Last updated 17th Aug 2022
On Thursday 7th July, Mark Forrest invited author Adele Parks into the Scala Radio Book Club, to discuss her brand-new novel, One Last Secret.
A week at a beautiful chateau in the south of France - it should be a straightforward final job for Dora. She's a smart, stunning and discreet escort and Daniel has paid for her services before. This time, all she has to do is to convince the assembled guests that she is his girlfriend. Dora is used to playing roles and being whatever men want her to be. It's all about putting on a front.
One last chance
It will be a last, luxurious look at how the other half lives, before Dora turns her back on the escort world and all its dangers. She has found someone she loves and trusts. With him, she can escape the life she's trapped in. But when Dora arrives at the chateau it quickly becomes obvious that nothing is what it seems...
One last secret
Dora finds herself face-to-face with a man she has never forgotten, the one man who really knows her. And as old secrets surface, it becomes terrifyingly apparent that one last secret could cost Dora her life...
From the Sunday Times number one bestseller Adele Parks comes a blisteringly provocative novel about power, sex, money and revenge.
Mark began the interview asking Adele what’s going on in Dora’s life, as the book begins.
‘Yeah, Dora is quite an interesting heroine, very different from any I've ever written before,’ said Adele. ‘I often write about resourceful, resilient women, but I think I write the kind of women that most people relate to, and they're just put in an extreme situation. I don't think most people will think that about Dora because Dora is a high-end escort. We meet her, just as she's trying to leave this profession, but she takes on one final job. She goes to a chateau in the south of France, which is a truly glamorous, and fun place to visit, However, nothing is what it seems at the chateau. Everybody she meets seems a little off, and indeed she meets somebody from her past who holds secrets about her, and indeed they are life threatening secrets. It becomes a sort of race against time to see which of these two people holds the one last secret, because that is the power within this game.’
Mark asked, ‘There are a good number of twists, turns and reveals right up to the end. How early in the writing process do you know how exactly things will end up?’
‘Yeah, I do always know my end,’ said Adele. ‘I don't always know all the twists and turns. They sometimes take me by surprise as much as they do for the reader. I'm very instinctually aware of when something needs to be dropped in a book and when some sort of new clue needs to be there. I spend a lot of time planning. I actually plan and plot my book and interview my characters, which sounds very bizarre, but I have a process whereby I literally sit down, in my mind, with a notebook and interview my characters, a whole host of between sort of 50 and 100 questions. I just pick different ones to throw at them to get to know them. So I'm incredibly comfortable with both the plot and characters before I start, and I might spend three, four, even five months doing that.’
Mark asked, ‘Where are we with a screen adaptation?’
‘I mean, I currently have six novels in various states! It's such a long, old process. Honestly, I thought it was tricky getting published, and I thought writing books was complex! This is significantly more complex. It's interesting though because I do feel very content that my books, are already books. If they ever became movies or TV shows, that would be the icing on the cake and extremely wonderful. But probably the fun of it for me, would just be seeing how other people would interpret my creative vision and make it theirs.’
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