The Blue Place (Aud Torvingen)

Book excerpt: The first of Nicola Griffith’s beloved Aud Torvingen crime series. It would be so easy—a step, a smile, swift whirl and grab, and snap: done. I even knew how she would fall, what a tiny sound her last sigh would be, how she would fold onto the pavement. Eight seconds. Aud Torvingen is a rangy six-footer with eyes the color of cement and the tendency to hurt people who get in her way. Born in Norway, a land of ice and snow, she now lives in Atlanta, luxuriating in the lush heat and brashness of the New South, gliding easily between the worlds of the elegant elite and the criminal underbelly, beautiful and functional as a folded razor. On an April evening between thunderstorms, Aud turns a corner and collides with a running woman. She catches the scent of clean, rain-wet hair, thinks, Today, you are lucky, and moves on—and behind her the house explodes in a tiger lily of flames. When Aud turns back, the woman is gone. But the woman, Julia, returns, seeking Aud’s protection in a deadly international game of art forgery, drugs, money laundering, and murder. But Aud knows danger. When danger sits opposite and offers you the dice, you should walk away. Danger loads the dice, it cheats. But for Julia, Aud will play—and risk losing herself in that cool blue place where everything slows to crystal clarity and violence is bliss . . . Nicola Griffith’s The Blue Place reshapes the noir suspense novel into something refreshing, and excitingly new.