The Aud Torvingen Series
by Nicola Griffith

Reviewed by Galen Strickland
Posted May 22, 2025
Edits and Addendum on May 27

The Blue Place / Stay / Always

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Nicola Griffith is this year's recipient of SFWA's Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award. I have previously reviewed five of her books. They ranged from science fiction (her debut Ammonite, plus Nebula-winner Slow River), to fantasy (Spear), and historical fiction (Hild & Menewood), the first of which had a hint of possible fantasy elements under the surface. In between those she wrote her Aud Torvingen trilogy, which I would identify as neo-noir mystery. The Blue Place was first published in 1998, but the links above are for a reprint edition due out in a couple of weeks. The other two will be released the same day, and I assume both will follow the same pattern of first-person narration by Aud, a Norwegian-American woman who has had a varied and colorful past. Not all of her backstory has been revealed yet, but I will be reading the others soon. I haven't read a lot of mysteries, but this seems to follow common tropes, which are usually evident in film and TV adaptations of such stories too. That does not mean those tropes lead to expected results every time. There were a few instances of dialog that made me think, "Uh oh, they just jinxed themselves now," but what I expected to happen didn't. At that time at least.

At the beginning of the story Aud lives in Atlanta, Georgia. She first moved there when she was 18 to attend Georgia Tech, but I'm not sure what she intended to study. She could have waited for other offers, her qualifications should have attracted Ivy League schools, but Tech was the first to respond. She doesn't actually reveal that information until later, and that also applies to her saying the first time she had killed a man was when she was 18. We learn that story when she tells it to another, nearly 3/4 of the way through the book. The person she tells also had a traumatic incident in their past, the details of which we learn earlier than Aud's reveal. Other parts of her backstory not yet detailed is when and why she worked for the Atlanta Police Department, but she quit after several years, and we get a little bit of her reasoning for that. Her father is deceased, but he had been a successful businessman, leaving her a sizable inheritance. She doesn't need to work, and she doesn't for the most part, but one thing she does is teach a self-defense course to new police recruits, although I'm not sure how many times a week, or month. Griffith has taught self defense in the past herself. Aud's father was American, from Chicago, her mother Norwegian. She is a diplomatic attaché to the Norwegian ambassador to the UK, and had worked in that field since Aud was a child. Aud and her mother were never close, Aud being ferried back and forth between Oslo and London, or Oslo to the family's seter a couple of hundred miles north of that, staying with an aunt most of those times. The family still owns the seter but other people run the farm, but also keep the main cabin in good condition for whenever any Torvingen wishes to visit or vacation there.

The story begins around midnight in Atlanta, Aud walking in the rain. As she rounds a corner she collides with another woman coming from the opposite direction. They stare at each other briefly, then slide past each other. Shortly afterwards, Aud feels the blast of an explosion behind her. She turns to see a house in flames, but the other woman has quickly disappeared. She hangs around long enough for the fire and police departments to arrive, and being known to some of them she is able to make a few inquiries. The police request she file a witness report in the morning. Then the other woman, Julia Lyons-Bennet, shows up at her self-defense class, waiting until the recruits leave, then they spar through several different martial arts techniques. A man had died in the fire, a good friend of Julia's. She was convinced Aud had something to do with it, which she had reported to the police, only to be told that was highly unlikely. One thing about the case both Aud and Julia are convinced doesn't make sense is the large stash of cocaine found in her friend's garage. Julia is an art broker, her friend an appraiser. She knows he would not be involved with drugs, but even if so, why would whoever set the fire leave the cocaine there for the police to find? It was hundreds of thousands of dollars worth, later identified as at least 99% pure cocaine. Since Aud has many contacts with police and other sources around Atlanta, she agrees to investigate, even though she isn't a private detective. Julia had been on the way to that house to consult with her friend about a piece of art, a painting she had sold years before, then it was sold again, the new owner wanting to ship it to France. Julia suspects it was not the original, but a faked duplicate. Aud later deduces the perpetrator of the fire had intended to kill Julia too.

What I had anticipated to be non-stop action, with fights and chases, surprised me with several different lulls between details of the case, so it was unpredictable, with one exception. As it was with Walt Whitman (and Bob Dylan), Aud Torvingen contains multitudes. She did not seek out violence, but was prepared for it, knew how to deal with it. She had other interests, including wood-working and gardening. She had remodeled her house herself, including adding an attached deck. She has an area devoted to wood-working tools, and was in the process of building a rocking chair, still incomplete by end of book. She talks about wood-working as an artform, which type is best for different applications, the tightness of the grain, how to cut and plane and shape it to design. Then there is gardening, when she decides her yard needs flowers. In between checking on things for Julia, along with another side job of escorting a visiting woman from Spain interviewing for work in Atlanta, Aud goes out and buys several plats of flowers, mulch, and potting soil. The Spanish lady helps her with some of that. At one point she thinks, when Julia's case is done, she might go somewhere and help plant trees. Aud's narration also reveals she has a heightened sense of smell, not only for flowers and wood, but also a man's cologne or a woman's perfume, or the type of soap and shampoo they use. Also hearing, as she is able to identify different birds by their song. All of those senses help in her investigations. Other interests included history and culture. She tells Julia about how different that is in Europe compared to the States, that everywhere you turn you see the signs of history, whereas in the US a lot of that is destroyed by development. Something that is sort of an Easter egg, is Aud telling Julia that they should visit the Whitby Abbey, later home of Saint Hilda, subject of Griffith's Hild, written a decade and a half later.

I do not want to reveal too much about the art/cocaine/fire case, but she and Julia become close, even break into a house together to gather clues. That is when we learn the reason Julia had learned martial arts. Aud is stymied on several things during the investigation, so when Julia gets a call about a proposed art installation in Oslo, she invites Aud along. Aud thinks she might be able to stopover in London to see her mother, either before or after Oslo, plus she would have time to visit with her aunt, maybe spend some time at the family seter. It is at a club in Oslo when Aud tells Julia she is sure they are safe, no one should be able to find out where they were, or come after them, but even if so she would keep her safe. Something else about Aud; she is very intelligent, could do so many things with her life, or just be content building furniture or tending her garden. As I mentioned earlier, she does not seek out violence, but it is frequently on her mind. On numerous occasions she tells us how easy it would be to kill a person, being very meticulous in describing how she would do it. That includes those few brief seconds after she had collided with Julia before the explosion and fire. In that Oslo club she also told Julia if someone had followed them, how easily they could kill her, with several different variations. There had been indications before that the adrenaline of violence might be a thrill for Aud, but I guess for Julia too. When they get back to their hotel that night, they make love for the first time. Based on everything I thought I knew about Aud, she spoke three words I never thought she would utter. "I love you." That brought a giant smile to Julia's face, because apparently she already knew, and felt the same.

I won't reveal any more details about the case, or Aud and Julia's relationship, or the foods Aud's aunt introduced Julia to at her house, or the blissful few days they spent at the seter. No matter how many lulls there were in the action, that always came back, even after you think things have been resolved. There was only one thing that disappointed me. I had hoped my guess as to one particular antagonist would be wrong, something that came to me while Aud was talking in that Oslo bar. It would have been nice if Griffith had surprised me with someone unexpected. Other than that, the book is very, very good, and I highly recommend it. I will follow up with thoughts on the second book soon..

*     *     *

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Posted May 27, 2025
If I was to refrain from spoilers as much as I tried to do for the first book this review would only be a few sentences. Aud helps find a friend's fiancée, who had not responded to his calls or replied to emails for several months. Aud finds her in New York, and brings her back. Next, Aud tries to help a young Mexican girl caught up in an immigration/adoption scam. Along the way she has fraught conversations with her lover Julia. The last part deserves elaboration, due to things I didn't say about the conclusion of The Blue Place.

Aud had long been an insular, reclusive person, one thing I could identify with. Much less so for her tendency toward violence, even if just violent thoughts. There are several people who view Aud as a friend, but from her viewpoint they were acquaintances at most, or contacts for needed information. That included a few former police associates, and a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Then there was Dornan, owner of several coffee house/cafes around Atlanta, as well as a few other cities: Smyrna, Marietta, with prospects for expanding the Borealis franchise. I don't recall it mentioned in the first book, but apparently he had met Aud when she was a police officer, and she had saved his life, although I don't know the details. Aud had met Dornan's on again, off again girlfriend a few times. She did not like Tammy, for how she treated Dornan, as well as the time she had tried to seduce Aud. Dornan loved Tammy, always forgave her other flings when she returned to him. But now she has not returned, and he is worried. She had been working with a man who provided consultations to businesses to maximize their marketing and their store designs. Tammy went with him to Florida concerning a new mall, then George Karp invited her to New York for more training. That is when Dornan lost contact with her. When Dornan asked for Aud's help she asked him why she should bother, considering she didn't like Tammy, didn't think Tammy was good enough for him. His response surprised Aud. "Because we're friends, and that's what friends do. Help each other."

As mentioned before, Aud had received a large inheritance from her father, including about 200 acres near Asheville, North Carolina, which had been in his family for many generations. Dornan had to come to her there, where she was rebuilding an old cabin. She asks him to go back to Atlanta to gather as much personal information about Tammy as he could find, and he brought back more than she expected, including personal correspondence. Not sure why Aud didn't fly out of the Asheville airport, other than the fact she later said she wasn't aware they had an airport. She drives all the way to Newark, New Jersey, where she parks at their airport, then takes a cab into Manhattan. It only takes a few days search and surveillance to find out where George Karp lives and works, which turn out to be the same place, a loft apartment in SoHo. She stakes out his place, then when she sees him leave she picks the lock on his private elevator, goes up to the apartment, where she finds Tammy. She convinces Tammy to leave with her, both going back to Aud's hotel. I don't want to go into detail about what Tammy had experienced, except to say it involved abuse. While Tammy stays at the hotel, Aud returns to Karp's apartment, where she finds more damning evidence.

Now to Aud's conversations with Julia, which occur while she is working on her mountain cabin, as well as in the trailer she uses as a temporary home. Also on the trip to New York, and later when she goes to Arkansas. All of those conversations are in Aud's head, since Julia is not there. The title of this book refers to something Julia had asked Aud to promise her. Stay in the world, stop being distant from everyone else, allow people into her life. Julia was the first person Aud had allowed into her life, into her heart, for as long as she could remember. Aud's estrangement from the world was likely due to her mother's non-involvement in her life, along with other traumatic events, before, during, and after her police career. Now the major spoiler from the first book: Julia asked Aud for her promise on her death bed. Julia had been shot by hitmen in Olso, shortly after Aud had fought and killed another of the hitmen near her family's seter north of Oslo. Aud had not kept her promise to keep Julia safe. She had allowed Julia to return to Oslo alone for another meeting with her business associate. If Aud had dispatched her hitman quicker, had driven to Oslo faster, had gotten to Julia just a few seconds sooner, she could have saved her. That will forever haunt Aud. Will she be able to keep the promise to not close herself off again?

Her trip to Arkansas involved something else she discovered about George Karp. He had bought a young Mexican girl, about seven years old at the time, a couple of years before. She had been placed with a foster family, to be trained very conservatively, to be obedient and submissive. Luz was to be his eventual bride. Luckily, Adeline Carpenter was not as conservative as Karp had thought, allowing Luz more autonomy of thought than Karp would have wanted. She even allowed Luz to continue speaking Spanish, although she also taught her English, read to her, let her listen to audio books, and checked out library books for her. Among Luz's favorites were those of C. S. Lewis's Narnia. All of that had to be kept secret from Jud Carpenter, who was as conservative as Karp had hoped. I will also gloss over the events leading to the near removal of Luz from the Carpenter's home, to be taken by "adoption officials" to be placed in another home, since payments by Karp to the Carpenters would not continue. Aud sets up a contract with her lawyer, who had referred Aud to an immigration attorney previously. Aud will provide for Luz's upkeep, increased from what they had been receiving from Karp, but with other stipulations. Luz must be enrolled in a school, not home-schooled, the school to be agreed upon by all three adults, but Aud knew Adeline would be able to convince Jud of her choice. Aud also bought Luz a complete new set of the Narnia books, since she would have to return the ones she had to the library. Also a cell phone, and a charm bracelet, a bangle on which included Aud's phone number. She wants to hear from Luz as often as possible, especially if she has any questions. Luz now thinks of Aud as her tia, her auntie.

How long that relationship lasts will have to wait. It is possible the more Luz learns of Aud, the more she might want to end it. It may have been for the best that Aud's original intention to have visitation rights were not included in the contract. She can speak to Luz, even visit her, but could not take her from the Carpenter property. Aud is very intelligent, but also very opinionated, headstrong. She plans her various endeavours carefully, at least she thinks she is thorough, but certain things trigger impulsive action. That happened the first time she encountered Karp face to face, as well as when she confronted the people attempting to take Luz away. Another impuslive action occurred after she and Tammy returned to her mountain cabin. Aud ran off into the woods in the middle of the night, arguing with Julia. All of those times, along with another I won't mention, she was injured in various ways. She kept having to remind herself that "pain is just a message." She works through the pain, fights through the pain, grieves for Julia through the pain. I have not looked ahead for information about what will happen in the next book, Always, but it is my next read. It is longer that either of the first two books, half again as long as either, so I don't know how long that will take. Stay tuned.

 

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