The Blue Place
Former undercover cop Aud Torvingen is drawn into a dangerous chain of events in Atlanta. Through a bombing, money laundering, and a trip to Norway, the strong but emotionally guarded heroine is pushed out of her fragile balance.
Work Information
A woman who feels truly alive only in danger steps into the middle of a case.
The first Aud Torvingen novel by Nicola Griffith pairs a physically formidable heroine with a tightly wound investigation. The result is a crime story that combines momentum with psychological shading.
Review Summaries
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Readers praise the tense plotting and the hard-edged, compelling characterization of Aud. The violence and danger are described as vivid, with strong forward drive as a crime novel.
Book Information
- Publisher
- William Morrow
- Published
- 1998-07-01
- Pages
- 308 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 17.15 x 3.18 x 24.77 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780380974467
- ISBN-10
- 0380974460
- Price
- 2962 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Gay & Lesbian/Literature & Fiction/Fiction/Lesbian
A police lieutenant with the elite "Red Dogs" until she retired at twenty-nine , Aud Torvigen is a rangy six-footer with eyes the color of cement and a tendency to hurt people who get in her way. Born in Norway into the failed marriage between a Scandinavian diplomat and an American businessman, she now makes Atlanta her home, luxuriating in the lush heat and brashness of the New South. She glides easily between the world of silken elegance and that of sleaze and sudden savagery, equally at home in both; functional, deadly, and temporarily quiescent, like a folded razor. On a humid April evening between storms, out walking just to stay sharp, she turns a corner and collides with a running woman, Catching the scent of clean, rain-soaked hair, Aud nods and silently tells the stranger Today, you are lucky , and moves on--when behind her house explodes, incinerating its sole occupant, a renowned art historian. When Aud turns back, the woman is gone. But Julia Lyons-Bennet will return seeking Aud's help and pr
Nicola Griffith is a native of Leeds, England. At eighteen she moved to Hull, where she taught women's self-defense--to groups as diverse as the Equal Opportunities Training Unit and the Union of Catholic Mothers--and was the lead singer/songwriter for the all-woman band, Jane's Plane. She is the author of Ammonite and Slow River, which between them have won the Nebula Award, the James Tiptree, Jr. Memorial Award, and two Lambda Awards. Ms. Griffith currently lives in Seattle with her partner, writer Kelley Eskridge.
Reviews
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Excellent read. Fantastic characters that stay with you each ...
Excellent read. Fantastic characters that stay with you each time you stop reading. Just discovered Nicola Griffith books and read this after reading Slow River (another excellent read). I really did feel like I'd been to Atlanta and Norway. I was glad to discover 2 sequels to this book but unfortunately Stay (No 2 in trio) not available in Kindle format very frustrating.
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Masterful use of descriptive language
I will never forget this book. Words truly mean the world to me and Nicola Griffith captures places, people, feelings and even weather with such rich imagery that I marveled while I read the Blue Place. I found myself reading lines and whole paragraphs again and again to get the flavor of the images pressed into my memory. I loved Aud. So much so that I feel I have lost a friend as the book came to a close and I admit to being devestated that the author didn't give me the ending that I wanted. I had hopes that there would be a whole series of books featuring this protaganist over the intervening 20 years since this book was published, but I will have to settle for just 3. I know that I will be revisiting this story many times in my library.
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Great character and endearing story.
This is a novel I enjoyed very much mostly because of its great central character, Aud. She’s fantastic. Strong, smart, sharp, athletic, beautiful and lethal too if needed...so I was quite hooked from the start thanks to her. The down side is the contrived plot around that fake painting and explosion in a house. That really did not grab me as a storyline but Griffith is nimble enough to make it palatable. It takes some time for the romance between the two women to develop and the novel neatly improves when they both go on that journey to Norway. No more plodding from that point! In a way the itch is that the good bits are slow to start and are over too quickly. I wish Griffith had been more merciful with her characters...no spoiler but the ending is harsh. Crime books usually tend to have more positive conclusion...Now I feel compulsed to read ‘Stay’, the following volume to find out what happens to Aud next!
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NOT the Typical Cookie Cutter Lesbian Novel
Not a typical cookie-cutter lesbian fiction romance novel. It actually has depth and detail (sometimes a little too much detail.) The main character isn't all that likable in the beginning but she quickly grows on you. It is far better written than 90% of the lesbian fiction we settle for and bores me to tears. The characters are three dimensional and there is an actual multi layered story that is interesting, (not just girl meets girl, girl hates girl, girl likes girl, girls have sex. That story line has been used ad nausea.) I thought about it for hours afterward, and days later I still think it's one of the best written lesbian books I've read. I will admit that it doesn't have the ending I was hoping for, but Griffith is not a typical American author.
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Books
As this is a gift, I can’t comment, but price and delivery was good.