Yowza! Fist-slamming physicality beautifully balanced with raised emotional stakes
*Starred Review* Booklist

Publisher's Description

Aud Torvingen is back--contemporary fiction's toughest, most emotionally complicated noir hero returns to teach a new round of lessons in hard-hitting justice, and to confront new adversaries: her own vulnerability and desire.

The steely shell of Nicola Griffith's seemingly indomitable protagonist Aud Torvingen appears to be cracking. The six-foot-tall fury (who proved in The Blue Place and Stay that she can kill you as easily as look at you) is shaken by the shocking consequences of the self-defense class she's been teaching, and her investigation of what seems to be run-of-the-mill real-estate fraud is turning out to be more than she bargained for.

Always brilliantly intertwines the dramatic episodes of Aud's class with the increasingly complicated investigation that introduces Aud to the limits of self-reliance, and to the scary and beautiful prospect of allowing oneself to depend on other people. What emerges is a thrilling, thoroughly engrossing novel that imbues Griffith's "classic noir hero" (The New York Times Book Review) with an emotional complexity that far exceeds the boundaries of the genre, and will push Griffith to her well-deserved place at the front rank of new-wave literary crime writers.

Booklist
Yowza! Griffith's six-foot-tall, cropped-haired heroine Aud Torvingen is back, flying to Washington since she has inherited her father's holdings and must deal with a Seattle real-estate manager who is robbing her blind. She also needs to see her wealthy, diplomat mother and meet her new stepfather. Interspersed are flashbacks of the women's self-defense class she’d taught back home in Atlanta--with unforeseen and deadly results. Griffith deftly parallels the two narrative threads that comment on and complement each other, creating a synergy of action and adrenaline for one of crime fiction's toughest yet most sensual lesbian detectives. Griffith's writing is smart and crisply detailed as she smoothly orchestrates a plot that delivers Aud to the soundstage for an independent film. There, production problems raise her suspicions of sabotage, confirmed when the coffee urn is spiked with a drug cocktail of Ecstacy, magic mushrooms, oxycodone, angel dust, and speed, nearly killing Aud and various crew members. Fist-slamming physicality is beautifully balanced with raised emotional stakes as Griffith dares to take her lethally forceful heroine to a new level.

Publishers Weekly
At the start of Griffith's intense third thriller to star Aud Torvingen (after The Blue Place and Stay), the stylish half-American, half-Norwegian lesbian ex-cop and self-defense teacher is still grieving over the shooting death of her lover, Julia, a year earlier. Also distraught over a recent violent incident involving one of her self-defense students, Aud welcomes the chance to leave Atlanta, accompanied by her friend, Matthew Dornan, to visit her ambassador mother, Else, in Seattle. There sabotage of a TV pilot in production that's been receiving OSHA and EPA complaints disrupts their vacation. Adding romantic tension is Victoria "Kick" Kuiper, a caterer and former stuntwoman, to whom both Aud and Matthew are attracted. Aud's ace investigation reveals political and environmental chicanery, but more importantly, leads to a surprising lesson about love. Lucid prose and great self-defense lessons are a plus.

Echo Magazine
Aud (rhymes with proud) Torvingen makes her third appearance in Nicola Griffith's new novel, Always, which is more experimental in form and more existential in content and outlook than Stay or The Blue Place.
    The awe-inspiring Aud comes as close as is possible for an ordinary human to be a superhero. Fit, intelligent, independently wealthy and fearsomely capable of defending herself and those whom she chooses as her allies, Aud has a lot in common with Bruce Wayne, absent the gimmicks, costumes and secret identity.
    Always finds Aud back in Atlanta, teaching a self-defense course for women while making trips to Seattle with her friend Dornan, who wants to learn the secrets of coffee shop success and bring them to Atlanta. Being in Seattle also gives Aud a chance to find out firsthand why the management company of a warehouse she owns continues to report that her investment is losing money.
    The warehouse story turns out to involve corrupt city officials and the filmmaking industry. The developing arc of this story, and of Aud's complicated relationship with Kick, an injured stunt woman turned caterer, alternates with chapters set in Atlanta, in the bookstore basement where Aud meets with the women in her self-defense class. The two narratives remain independent, linked only by Aud.
    The story line of Always is not nearly as fascinating or intriguing as Aud herself. Besides being an ex-police officer, she's the daughter of an important Norwegian diplomat — her mother, Else. Else has just married an American businessman and they are visiting Seattle, which becomes part of the Seattle story.
    If it is true that "that which does not kill us makes us stronger," then Aud's indomitability owes much to the physical and emotional damages of her past. A lover-warrior, more antihero than hero, Aud's deep humanity seems to be in perpetual strife with her ability to create impenetrable emotional barriers against the world.
    Aud and Always are magnificent.

Excerpt

interview 1
(Audio)

interview 2
(Audio)

AfterEllen interview

Nan A. Talese
(Interview)