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Dear Readers,
When I started writing Evil Things, the story lived in my mind long before I had my protagonist. And then one day, I had this image of a woman tramping alone through the snow to solve a crime no one cares about. She just sort of appeared on the page. Hella is smart and stubborn as Hell, at a time when women are expected to shut up and be beautiful. I do realise now I wrote her up thinking of my grandmother, who, like Hella, was born in the 1920s, and who overcame incredible odds to become a medic. My grandmother never doubted that she could be as good as any man, and probably better than many. Hella is like that, too. When the novel opens, she is stuck in a tiny police station in Lapland. Her boyfriend left her. She is clearly not in a good place, but she is razor-sharp, and ambitious, and of course she wants to prove herself.
But Hella is also her own worst enemy. Her past experiences have hurt her terribly, and she is like a hedgehog, protecting her inner being behind a facade of sarcasm and criticism. She has lots of stellar qualities: she is honest, and kind, and generous to a fault, but she can also be socially awkward, and brusque. And, at the grand old age of twenty eight, she keeps wondering: are you a normal woman if you don’t want the same things as everyone else? And it is only natural that the questioning of the role assigned to her leads Hella to question those in authority on other issues, too. So, while her supervisor keeps telling her there was no crime, she's just the person to prove him wrong and go and solve it.
I sincerely hope you enjoy reading about Hella as much as I enjoyed writing about her.
With my very best wishes,
Katja
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