Blog Tour: The Odense Series

Today, I am delighted to be hosting a guest post by Sarah Surgey as part of the Odense Series Blog Tour

Nordic Noir meets Brit Crime

By Sarah Surgey

Nordic culture has been part of our working and personal lives for quite some years now.

I am British but have a part of my close family that are Danish. We visit often and celebrate Nordic culture with them. I started freelancing as a writer interviewing and featuring Nordic Noir authors, for several magazines. I then moved on to running a site dedicated to all Nordic talents but, specifically in literature and the arts.

Emma is Australian married to a Norwegian and now lives with him in Norway, and on a professional level she owns and edits her own Nordic inspired magazine, Cinema Scandinavia. She is also going to be involved with the next Scandi Film Festival.

So when Emma and I met through our freelance writing of Nordic film and literature, we decided immediately that our thriller novels would be within the Nordic Noir genre.

Both having a love of this genre meant that we also had a grounded knowledge that as non-Nordic authors, we felt, would give us a certain credibility.

But, studying Nordic Noir and speaking with many famous authors, script writers and actors in this field we also knew that some readers were coming to a point where they wanted it to go down a slightly different road.

We were confident that blending another sub-genre in with it would work and brit crime just felt right.

They run parallel with each other, the stark harsh realities of daily living, cold isolated surroundings and not always reaching that happy ending!

The Odense Series was born. Our first book in the series 'A Presence of Absence' leads the way, builds the character profiles up so they are strong and introduces their back history.

Two suicides, two countries, decades apart leads to murder in the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen, Odense and to the lies and deception back in our protagonist, Detective Simon Weller's home city, London.

We take our British detective and place him in the middle of Odense where he has to work alongside local officer, Jonas Norgaard. They have to track a killer. But, when Simon's wife, Vibekes' name appears in some evidence, his integrity is compromised and London and Odense seemed to be linked by past demons.

The second book is currently being written. We obviously stay in Odense and london but our detectives are pulled up to the most northern part of Norway after a young girl's body is found in a burned out church in Odense. Clues lead them up to Norway where Norse Mythology and murder are found hand in hand.

Odense was once Odin and this was our perimeters to explore Nordic history once more whilst incorporating a crime thriller.

About the Authors

Sarah Surgey

Sarah Surgey is a 36 year old British feature writer for various magazines. She lives in the UK with her husband and 4 daughters.

She has had an interest in all things Nordic for many years and has written about many genres within this subject for publication. Although British, she has Danish family and enjoys exploring Denmark and its culture whenever the opportunity arrives.

Sarah was brought up with crime books and inevitably has always had crime story scenarios going around inside her head. After interviewing many famous authors for different magazines within the Nordic literary circle and always knowing the answer to her question of "why did you start writing?" she felt now was her time to get her stories out there, for people to read!

Emma Vestrheim

Emma Vestrheim is the owner and editor-in-chief of Cinema Scandinavia, a Nordic film and television journal that analyses popular Nordic titles. Part of her work includes working with directors, actors and filmmakers, and her numerous interviews with the biggest names in Nordic film and television have given her a privileged access to what makes Nordic narratives so successful. Cinema Scandinavia publishes bimonthly and is available in major Nordic film libraries.

Check out the other stops on the blog tour here: