Thomas Enger - PIERCED

‘I’ll tell you who killed your son if you clear my name.’

I could talk for a very long time about Norweigan,Thomas Enger’s latest book, Pierced, but instead, I’m going to give you a quote from the back of the novel – ‘Pierced is a stunning, emotionally charged slice of Nordic Noir’ – and that my friends, sums it up exactly.

So, here is a brief introduction to the novel, and then we can get up close and deadly with the writer himself when he spoke to me for writing.ie, about the inspiration behind the creation of this fantastic second novel in the Henning Juul series.

If you find out who set me up, I’ll tell you what happened the day your son died. That is the message crime reporter Henning Juul, back at work after being terribly burned and scarred for life in a fire that killed his son, receives from a jailed extortionist named Tore Pulli who’s been convicted for a murder he claims he didn’t commit. Truth has never meant more for Henning Juul. And when Pulli is found dead in his prison cell—an apparent suicide—Juul decides to dig deeper. He knows the murders Pulli was convicted of do not bear his signature, and he’s convinced that Pulli would never have taken his own life. Striking up a fragile partnership with Iver Gundersen, a journalist now living with Juul’s ex-wife, Juul uncovers an internal power struggle in the gang world, where the desire for serious money is destroying the traditional, honour-based hierarchy. Uncovering more questions than answers, Henning soon realizes that he has to find not one but several killers . . . ruthless murderers who have never been more dangerous than they are now.

When I met international bestselling author, Thomas Enger, moments after he arrived in Dublin, the first thing I wanted to ask him about was the brilliant character Henning Juul. Henning is a man scarred physically and mentally, a man in pursuit of the truth behind the fire which killed his son. Was he, I asked Enger, one of those characters who came almost fully formed to the page?

Thomas Enger told me, ‘He was instantly present in my head, he was almost like a voice saying this is a character you have to write and his name is Henning Juul – you have to write him. It was such a strong impression, and when I started writing him, I had spent six months planning out what I wanted to do with my character, writing the very first chapter of the very first book, it instantly felt like, yes, this is his voice. When I wrote Pierced, a lot of Henning’s character had been established in the first novel, and it was a matter of sustaining this while not repeating information unnecessarily, but it is always difficult with a series, and it is even more apparent now writing the third novel, deciding how much of the earlier elements to put in, and leave out.’

If you pick up a copy of Pierced, and I strongly recommend you do, like me you might be intrigued by the relationship between Henning and Iver Gundersen, the journalist now living with Juul’s ex-wife, Nora.......

READ MORE over at Crime Scene HERE