06 Jun 2012 20:43:39
Bestselling thriller author, journalist and archaeologist Paul Sussman, whose novels were described as "the intelligent reader's answer to The Da Vinci Code", died unexpectedly last week aged 45.
His wife, Alicky Sussman, a documentary producer, wrote on his Facebook page that the author "suffered a ruptured aneurysm and died suddenly on Thursday 31 May. He was a truly unique person – a brilliant dad and adored husband. We will all miss him so, so much xxx."
Sussman had a number of jobs – he wrote on his website that he "worked as a gravedigger in France, sold cigars in Harrods and toured Europe as Aunt Sponge in a ground-breakingly execrable production of James and the Giant Peach" – before he began writing for the Big Issue. He worked at the magazine for seven years, also freelancing for the Guardian, the Independent, the Evening Standard, the Daily Express and CNN.com before a lifelong love of archaeology led to an invitation to dig new ground in the Valley of the Kings in 1998.
His bestselling novels mix the modern-day police procedural with archaeological mysteries. His first, The Lost Army of Cambyses, entwined the unexplained story of the 523 BC disappearance of an army in the Sahara with Inspector Yusuf Khalifa of the Luxor police's investigation into three seemingly unrelated murders. Khalifa returned in The Last Secret of the Temple, drawn again into an ancient mystery in a novel described in the Independent as "the intelligent reader's answer to the Da Vinci Code. His fourth novel, The Labyrinth of Osiris, is due out in July. Sussman wrote on his website on 26 May that a "proof copy of the new book arrived in the post this morning – very exciting".
"It was great that he found his voice as a fiction writer," said Guardian journalist Xan Brooks, who worked with Sussman at the Big Issue. "He was particularly proud of the one he'd just finished: he felt he had nailed it." Brooks said that Sussman was "the most entertaining person I've ever known in my life – honest and brave and warm-hearted and devastatingly funny".
"Most people are like little glow worms, but he was a full-on fireworks display," said Brooks. "That found its way through to the page, so that reading him was absolutely captivating. But spending an evening with him was better still."
