The Blue Place [Hardcover]

Nicola Griffith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1998

A stylishly erotic and suspenseful new thriller from an award-winning author.

Formerly an undercover police lieutenant, Aud Torvingen has the pale eyes of a wolf. Born into diplomatic society, she now makes Atlanta her home, gliding easily between the world of silken elegance and that of sleaze and sudden savagery. Late one night, out walking just to stay sharp, Torvingen has a chance encounter with a running woman; seconds later a house explodes and the woman disappears. But Julia Lyons-Bennet will return, seeking Aud's protection from a deadly international game of forgery, drugs, and murder. Aud knows there is danger here, pulling her back once again to that cool blue place where everything slows down and takes on a crystal clarity: that place where violence is bliss. The danger excites Julia as well -- sexy, refined, frightened Julia -- forging an intense erotic bond between the two women that hangs in the balance -- along with their lives.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Science fiction writer Nicola Griffith, winner of the Nebula and Tiptree Awards, proves that good writing transcends genre. The Blue Place is a spare, cold suspense thriller--Norwegian noir--with the kind of strong, enigmatic characters that made Griffith's Slow River such a great read. Aud Torvingen is a former cop, martial artist, and Scandinavian to the core. She stalks powerfully through the streets of Atlanta and the fjords of Norway in search of an art thief and killer. At first, she frightens us a bit, because she insistently imagines how easy it would be to kill almost everyone she meets. Having descended more than once into that dark, cold psychic realm wherein violence provides primal pleasure, Aud is constantly wary of her fellow human beings. But our fear turns to fascination as she finds herself falling in love with Julia, a smart, beautiful art dealer mixed up in the crime, and getting closer to finding the center of the danger in the icy north.

As in Slow River and Ammonite, Griffith's attention is often on the bodies of her characters--their awareness of skin and muscle, sinew and bone suffuses the action. Griffith closely scrutinizes their deeper inner workings, their emotions and logic, as well. The story is tense and gripping, as a good thriller should be, but the best part of The Blue Place is Aud's fascinatingly familiar search for self. --Therese Littleton

Review

Griffith breathes life into an appealing heroine in this smoothly plotted pulse-slammer ... compelling ... Readers will want to see more of Aud Torvingen. -- Publishers Weekly

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 308 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; 1st edition (July 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0380974460
• ISBN-13: 978-0380974467
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (56 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,773,485 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I'm English and live in Seattle with Kelley Eskridge, also a writer. I love writing. I love hearing from readers. Contact me on my blog, http://asknicola.blogspot.com or through my webpage www.nicolagriffith.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Independant ex-cop finds heart, November 29, 1998

By 

Stewart Thompson ([e-mail] (Leeds, England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Blue Place (Hardcover)

Destined to become a classic of the genre. This is a rip-roaring, unputdownable, cracking page turner. A stunningly well paced narrative, building from a slow burn start to an ending that delivers a devastating blow.

Aud Torvingen - 6ft Norwegian Uberbabe. Ex-cop, and now bodyguard, self-defence expert, freefall skydiver, master carpenter, glacier climber and top horticulturist to boot(!!). A lethal killer. Super-cool, confident and in control. But becomes fallible as soon as she falls in love with Julia Lyons-Bennet, the woman whom Aud has been hired by, to protect.

This is a bitter-sweet love story, with a strong central character that you care deeply about. In Aud Torvingen, Nicola Griffith has created the quintessential Lesbian Icon. Intriguing, complex and believable.

By the very nature of the genre you know a tragedy is just waiting to happen. And the bad guy is screamingly obvious. But this doesn't matter. It is the journey that counts.

The narrative takes you to places you don't usually come across in this genre, and has a beautiful sence of time and place. Very evocative of the Norwegian landscape, mixing as it does myth and fable, the fjells, local cuisine, character and temperament.

The novel itself is reminiscent of David Lindsey's 'Requiem for a Glass Heart' in it's central Lesbian relationship, breakneck narrative thrust and killer ending.

Like all great novels 'The Blue Place' leaves you desperate for more. But how can any future installments ever hope to compare with such an astonishing and accomplished work - and one that is so obviously a one off.

A pleasure to read this outstanding novel. Extremely Highly Recommended.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars kind of a dud, May 2, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Blue Place (Paperback)

I love Amazon for offering the ability to see other readers' opinions of a book, but now I'm going to think twice before believing everything I read here. I feel a little like I was tricked into buying this book by the numerous positive reviews, so now I'm taking the time to warn other hopeful searchers: turn back while you still can - it wasn't that great. After reading the book, I was far from impressed. In a word, it was: underdeveloped. The characters had little or no depth, the plot was overall pretty boring, and the writing very basic. It didn't take me anywhere, and I couldn't even care one wit about the ending or what happened to the characters. When trying to relate to the narrator and/or her story, I only ever felt like I was reading some anti-climactic manifestation/fantasy of the author's own identity. And about the "steam" factor, suspense, or sexual tension: Griffith must've left it with the rest of the character/plot development. It's like the author can't quite bring herself to fall into the romance of the world/characters she's created (like she doesn't want it to be another cliche lesbian romance novel with the usual stereotype characters) so instead, her book suffers from technical hang-ups, a cheesy array of writing techniques, and two-dimensional characters that, ironically enough, all lend themselves to exactly what she's trying to avoid. In the beginning, I was really looking forward to liking the main character and wanting to read the sequel, but by the end I found myself wondering what all the hype was about and wishing I'd never spent the money in the first place. If you're looking for anything as remotely interesting as, say, a Sarah Waters or Jeanette Winterson or even a John Irving or Stephen King novel, look elsewhere. I've read worse (hence the 2 star rating), but I've also read far far better, so I just HAD to speak up and say that the book was not nearly as good as its reviews suggest. Even some of the truly cliche, predictable xena/gabrielle-type romances I've read (see: Lucifer Rising) were eons more satisfying than this.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great language, spotty plot, January 26, 2000

By 

Heidi I. Jones "book-loving geek" (Tioga County, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Blue Place (Paperback)

I loved Griffith's _Ammonite_... beautiful rich characters, detailed setting and intricate plot. I was hoping for an equal treatment of the detective novel format. Griffith's language in _The Blue Place_ is still incredible, especially the first time Julia and Aud spar <purrr>. However, the plot development is significantly weaker, with many logical gaps and hanging threads. For example, near the beginning, she references Aud's 60-year-old handmade quilt, which no one else has ever seen. It would have been nice to at least mention it near then end as a point of loss. The bad guy (I won't mention who) isn't a clear picture, despite his importance in Aud's life.

It's a good read, tho! Enjoy!