A variety of written sources proved invaluable in terms of pointing out things I didn’t know or clarifying things I did (or thought I did). For mirror neurons, I owe a great deal to Sharon Begley’s Wall Street Journal science column; I applied her explanations rather literally. Much of the neat (or diabolical, depending) real estate tax info also came from The Wall Street Journal (Ray A. Smith’s Property Report, June 1, 2006). A House & Garden article from about ten years ago, “Dealer’s Choice: The King of Ming,” by Amy Page, alerted me to Chinese furniture. Lawrence Weschler’s intriguing New Yorker profile of Ed Weinberger was the basis for Aud’s examination of the fictional Wiram exhibit in Atlanta. Some of Kick’s theories about falling and story come from Garrett Soden’s excellent Falling (Norton).
Mostly, though, I just made stuff up.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
NICOLA GRIFFITH, the author of Stay, The Blue Place, Slow River, and Ammonite, has won the Nebula Award, the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, and multiple Lambda literary awards. She is also the coeditor of the Bending the Landscape anthology series. She was a women’s self-defense instructor for many years, until she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1993. Born in England, Griffith now lives in Seattle with her partner, the writer Kelley Eskridge.
ALSO BY NICOLA GRIFFITH
STAY
THE BLUE PLACE
SLOW RIVER
AMMONITE
Praise for Nicola Griffith and Aud Torvingen
“Griffith is a writer of considerable gifts. Her sentences shimmer, her powers of observation and description are razor sharp.”
“Aud Torvingen is one of my favorite kick-ass, supercompetent, cool-headed, hot-blooded, semilegal girls…. She knows how to fight, kill, survive, and think.”
“Griffith has a fine way with character and sure talent.”
“Griffith’s real genius is a portrayal of the brilliant, though damaged, Aud… a woman who loses herself in the beauty and balletic control of pure violence yet seeks salvation.”
“The sexiest action figure since James Bond, six blond feet of sinew, muscle, and bone. She’s also an ex-cop, a martial arts instructor, a master carpenter, and a private dick for hire. She’s beautiful, she’s independently wealthy, she’s in perfect shape: she’s downright deadly. And sorry, guys: she’s into girls.”
“[Aud] is sleek, sexy, and decidedly dangerous… everything a suspense novel heroine should be.”
“Stay is simply gorgeous—a powerful character study in the rough domain of mystery and adventure. It is also a courageous and frank portrait of grief, deeply complex and completely true. There was not one misstep, not one moment when I was not being pulled along hoping for some life-saving miracle. And when it happens, it feels real—stubborn human nature doing what it does. Stay made me glad to read it.”
"A noir thriller with a female protagonist who makes La Femme Nikita look like a Powerpuff Girl.”
"Griffith’s tautly balanced prose perfectly complements her heroine’s erratic progress…. [She] skillfully links sensual details with emotional content, anchoring us firmly in Aud’s brutal, beautiful world.”
“Griffith employs a crime thriller’s page-turning audacity and hard-boiled heroine without succumbing to cheap genre clichés. Like the protagonist, the language has a steely snap to it…. Stay is a captivating read.”
“Aud, the protagonist of this novel, is an intuitive, old-fashioned sleuth who would do Elmore Leonard proud.”
“Griffith’s prose is at once brutal and beautifully wrought. Stay has a central character both hard-boiled and a softie at heart, and momentum like a car wreck.”
“Griffith switches genres and breathes life into an appealing heroine in this smoothly plotted pulse-slammer…. Readers will want to see more of Aud Torvingen.”
“Well-crafted, evocatively written and swift paced, The Blue Place is for devotees of classic, hard-edged detective tales…. But this isn’t simply a thriller [but] an excursion into the more disturbing sides of psyches…. Ultimately The Blue Place is, as all good thrillers and all the best literary fiction are, a novel of quests and identity.”
“Griffith has already won herself Lambda and Nebula awards… and she seems destined to add to her laurels.” —The Washington Post Book World
“A heroine who is a cold-blooded killing machine… but superfit, super-bright Aud is certainly one watchable sleuth and may win Griffith quite a following of less squeamish readers.”
"The novel goes down like honey, full of the quirky detail that makes a good mystery great…. If pretty girls and danger don’t grab you, the plot will.”
“Griffith clearly challenges us to understand a radically atypical—or perhaps just typically ignored—aspect of the female psyche: the fine line between brutality and passion. She produces passages that provoke and startle… finely rendered observations. The novel soars. Aud’s ‘blue place’—where women glow with the elated, bluish tinge of power rather than the black and blue marks of victimhood—is a peculiar and unsettling place indeed.”
“Griffith proves she can write crime fiction that stacks up more than favorably with the work of the best writers in the field…. Dennis Lehane, Andrew Vachss, and James Lee Burke have each taken crime fiction to a new level and each has expanded the possibilities of the genre. Nicola Griffith is the next name on a very short list.”
Copyright
RIVERHEAD BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group