Created by Nicola Griffith
“An owl screamed in the wood and I wanted to ride behind its eyes when it plunged its talons into living flesh, wanted to tear something warm and soft to pieces while it squealed.”
AUD TORVINGEN is Nicola Griffith‘s hard-as-nails and Norwegian-to-the-core lesbian bodyguard/P.I./shit magnet, first introduced in the widely-acclaimed The Blue Place (1998). Recently relocated to Atlanta, she’s digging the “lush heat and brashness of the New South” when she’s hired to protect Julia, a young woman, who’s caught up in a nasty web of art forgery, drugs, money laundering, and murder.
You like your hard-boiled on the dark side? With a Sapphic twist? This one’s for you.
But Aud’s not exactly your warm, cuddly kinda lesbian. Not that you have to love or even necessarily like a protagonist, but they have to be, you know, interesting.
And Aud is, uh, interesting…
Aud (“rhymes with shroud”) is a fascinatingly complex character, the wealthy heir to her American father’s vast fortune and the daughter of a coldly ambitious Norwegian diplomat; a six-foot-tall, blonde ex-cop and martial arts expert with “eyes the color of cement” constantly seeking to balance the violence and brutality in her life with tenderness, sensuality, and vulnerability. But she can also be harsh and judgmental, and withering in her comments, with plenty of prejudices and biasses that are weird (she has what can only be called a “wood fetish) and sometimes cringey. And she can’t read a room, for the life of her.
In other words, she’s an alternately sensitive and insensitive kinda gal, but for God’s sake, don’t cross her. She’ll kick your ass, and possibly cripple you for life.
In the long-awaited (four years !) sequel, Stay (2002), Aud is hiding out in the Appalachians, trying to come to terms with the murder of her lover, licking her wounds and painstakingly rebuilding (by hand) a cabin. She’s reluctantly drawn back into the real world when her best friend’s would-be fiancée goes missing.
Aud returned in the significantly longer (and longer-winded) Always (2007). The book follows two separate streams: one where she’s looking into a crooked Seattle real estate developer who’s using Aud’s own property (currently being used to film a television pilot) as part of a scam, and the other follows her teaching a self-defense class for women back in Atlanta.
The title is pulled from this line: “No matter how big or fast or strong you are, how heavily armed or well trained, there’s always going to be someone out there who is bigger, faster or stronger. Always.”
Which Aud discovers, to her regret.
The author says she always intended to write five books in the series, but was disheartened when those first three books ended up being published by three different publishers. It was “not a happy state of affairs,” she admitted. “Readers of one didn’t always know the others existed; they look completely different, and have wildly divergent cover copy.”
But in 2024, the rights to all three books reverted to the author, and all three were reissued by MCD/Picador. Audio editions, and three new Aud stories were also promised.
We shall see…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
UNDER OATH
- “I can’t rave enough about The Blue Place. It just slayed me.”
— Dennis Lehane - “If Jack Reacher had a sister, she’d be Aud Torvingen . . . he would love her, but he’d be a little scared of her, too.”
― Lee Child - “A hero as sexy and iconic as televion’s Xena… At once appalling and awe-inspiring, Aud is a bracing amalgam of fire and ice, of the New South and the Old World. She’s a stirring inductee into the sisterhood of lady law. Or lawless, as the case may be.”
— Village Voice - “… the most complex yet…Little is held back: the violence, the eroticism, the shocking plot turns…”
— Seattle Post-Intelligencer on Always
NOVELS
- The Blue Place (1998) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
- Stay (2002) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
- Always (2007) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
- Whistlin’ Dixie
Southern Eyes - I Could Be Your Bodyguard (Hey!)
Personal Security Specialists
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
