SON is our first novel together, and it introduces Kari Voss, a world authority on memory and body language, more commonly nicknamed the ‘Human Lie Detector’, after having successfully consulted with the Oslo police for many years. In SON, Kari finds herself drawn into a high-profile, high-stakes investigation after two teenage girls are found brutally murdered in the small village of Son, just outside Oslo. Kari is very familiar with grief and trauma herself, having lost her husband in a fire, but what’s keeping her up at night is her son Vetle’s disappearance seven years earlier. In fact, he was kidnapped, never seen or heard from again. Now Vetle’s best friend, Jesper, has been arrested for the savage murders in Son. With a mountain of evidence against him, everyone believes he’s guilty.
Except Kari.
Digging deeper into the case she untangles a web of lies that reaches back into her own tragic past. She believes there is a very angry killer out there, still at large, and she will do whatever it takes to prevent the authorities from putting an innocent boy in prison.
SON is the first novel in the Kari Voss series, all set in Norway. But how did this project come about, and how on earth did we do the actual writing – one of us being Norwegian, and other French?
That’s probably the question we hear the most when we meet people. It’s already hard enough to write a book on your own, but when you do it with someone else, there is a host of potential issues that could come into play. Like ego, for instance. Or work ethic. Availability. Perseverance – because writing a book is hard work; don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. How will that partnership stand the test of time? What about the plot, when the holes in it become huge enough for you to fall through, or when the characters act out of character (because, sometimes, yes, they do)? What tone will your deliberations take when you keep banging your heads against the wall, struggling to find adequate solutions or plot plugs, when the other one doesn’t agree to your suggestions or simply doesn’t understand the ideas you’ve put forward? How will you cope with all of that when a deadline is looming, when there are bills to pay and when you’re touring at the same time, or your kids get sick, or you lose a parent or whatever curve ball life throws at you. Not to mention the point when that doubt creeps in (because yes, it always does) that maybe this isn’t such a great story after all, we’re terrible writers, our ideas are crap, and we should just quit and go hide under a blanket somewhere and feel very sorry for ourselves. Writing together means all of this, times two, and it is a dangerous prospect in the sense that you are forced to expose yourself completely to your partner. Before you begin you don’t know what that’s like, or how your project or relationship will evolve. You can’t possibly know until you’ve done it. You just have to take a chance and see.
Which is what we did, back during covid times, when we were both depressed out of our minds and isolated, like everyone else. We needed something fun to help us get through the dark days, and Kari became our beacon of light, so to speak. When we first started talking about doing something together, we realised that we had a great creative energy, with ideas sparking left and right every time we talked to each other – initially about our solo projects, and then…
The biggest issue for us was not coming up with ideas or doing the actual work. We both love every aspect of crafting a good story, and we would often find ourselves discussing characters or chapters late at night, even on a Sunday, sending emails or texts back or forth or just talking about them on the phone. We have the same approach to work; we don’t mind obstacles or long hours, we don’t mind having to go extra rounds on details, because that’s where the devil is, and the magic happens. Our initial idea for the first story in the Kari Voss universe was not the one we ended up with. The story with Jesper and the girls remained, but we decided in later drafts to spin Vetle’s story quite differently. The first idea was good, but the later one was better.
For us the language challenge was the most obvious one, one writing originally in French, the other one in Norwegian. Initially, we thought the end product should be in Norwegian, since the story was set there, but we realised after a while that it became difficult for us to mould the prose properly, sending chapters back and forth between us in English at first, then Thomas translating it to his native tongue. This meant, of course, that once the process of fine-tuning everything would start, Johana couldn’t take part, because she didn’t read, speak or write Norwegian. It took us a while to realise that we needed a common ground, a language we could both work on and with. So we decided to do it all in English, which unlocked a lot for us. Everything became so much easier, since we already had a lot of the material. And we both shared the same English publisher, so it worked perfectly to edit and publish first in English. Norway, France and dozens of other countries soon came onboard, but the subsequent writing and editing had to be in our common language, and it’s all the better for it.
Writing a book is a long process. It takes detours you can’t possibly predict before you start, but – knock on wood – our journey towards the end product, despite all the hurdles and curve balls, has been incredibly rewarding, inspirational and, more than anything, a lot of fun. We hope that shines through in our prose and our plot twists, and that you will end up loving Kari just as much as we do.
(c) Thomas Enger & Johana Gustawsson
Thomas Enger and Johana Gustawsson are the authors of the Nordic Noir mystery, SON, published by Orenda Books.
About SON by Thomas Enger & Johana Gustawsson:
Psychologist and expert on body language and memory, Kari Voss investigates the murder of two teenaged girls in the small Norwegian town of Son, as suspicion is cast on multiple suspects. A mesmerisingly dark, twisty start to a nerve-shattering new series by two of the world’s finest crime writers…
Everyone here is lying…
Expert on body language and memory, and consultant to the Oslo Police, psychologist Kari Voss sleepwalks through her days, and, by night, continues the devastating search for her young son, who disappeared on his birthday, seven years earlier.
Still grieving for her dead husband, and trying to pull together the pieces of her life, she is thrust into a shocking local investigation, when two teenage girls are violently murdered in a family summer home in the nearby village of Son.
When a friend of the victims is charged with the barbaric killings, it seems the case is closed, but Kari is not convinced. Using her skills and working on instinct, she conducts her own enquiries, leading her to multiple suspects, including people who knew the dead girls well…
With the help of Chief Constable Ramona Norum, she discovers that no one – including the victims – are what they seem. And that there is a dark secret at the heart of Son village that could have implications not just for her own son’s disappearance, but Kari’s own life, too…
For fans of Harlan Coben, Lars Kepler, Jo Nesbo and Jorn Lier Horst … and The Mentalist.
Order your copy of SON online here.
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