If I’d met Johana Gustawsson without ever reading her fiction, I wouldn’t have thought she was a crime fiction writer. “You’d think I wrote romance, yes?” she quips as she laughs, calling me out on my prejudice.
Gustawsson’s critically acclaimed Roy and Castells series, including Block 46, Keeper, and Blood Song, has won the Plume d’rgent, Balai de la découverte, Balai d’Or, and Prix Marseillais du Polar awards and is now published in 19 countries. The Malayalam translations of the series have crossed multiple reprints, making Gustawsson a regular resident of the crimes section in most DC Books bookstores. As great crime fiction rouses the arrival of producers, a TV adaptation of Gustawsson’s series is currently underway in a French, Swedish and UK co-production.
In a conversation with Scroll, Gustawsson spoke about crime as a serendipitous genre, the absence/depiction of violence in her novels, her relationship with her father, who is her first editor, and the writing life as a woman who never quite fits in.
You’ve mentioned that you wrote the Roy and Castells series to bear witness to the overlooked stories of the Second World War. What drew you to crime fiction as the vehicle for these stories, especially since the genre is often seen as more light-hearted or escapist compared to historical fiction?
I didn’t choose the genre. Or rather, I didn't choose it willingly. There were many reasons.
First, there was my grandfather’s story. I really wanted to tell it because I wanted to understand how this respected, decorated war hero in France – there’s even an avenue in my hometown named after him – could be such a… well, not particularly caring father to my father, and not a great grandfather to me either. I was a good student, kind of a geek, loved history, but he never wanted to talk to me about those times. He was giving talks everywhere else, but not to his own grandchild. It was a total mystery to me.
It was like, how can it be that everywhere I went, they’d say, “Oh, you’re Simon Laguna’s granddaughter! How lucky you are!” And I’d think, “Lucky me? It’s not that great!” He might have been a great man, but he wasn’t great for his family. He was great for the world, which is good, but I really wanted to dig in and understand how he could be so caring on this huge, global level, but not on a family level. It’s a weird thing.
Then, there was this other thing that was kind of annoying me. When I’d read crime novels, or novels in general, you’d always have these great men as the main characters. And if there were women, they were just sidekicks, always asking, “What should we do now?” And I was like, “Seriously? In real life?” Since when are we like that? We’re the solvers! We’re the bearers of life. Life comes from us. And we’re saying, “Man, what should we do now?” No! Clearly not! So I had that idea.
And then, the third thing is that I’m really a European child. I’m French – Southern French, which is very different from Northern French – with family in Spain. I have a long Mediterranean culture. We speak with our hands, we’re tactile, we smile, it’s very different. And I was living in London, with a very different culture. In France we complain, we’re loud. In Great Britain, people are really proper, they don’t share their emotions, that kind of thing.
And then I was married to a Swede. And a Northern European is a whole different thing. They’re basically the polar opposite of who I am as a Southerner. We talk about problems. We might argue a lot, but then we hug and say, “It’s done, it’s dealt with.” Northern Europeans tend to slide things under the carpet. They don’t like to talk. They don’t like confrontation. And from my point of view, you just end up tripping over this big pile of problems, and nothing changes. And all those things, that was something I wanted to put in a story.
What kind of story, I didn’t know. I didn’t think, I’m going to write a crime story. I was just thinking, I’m going to write. When I shaped the story and had my two main characters – I always start with the characters – and I had this idea of block 46 of that man who comes into the Buchenwald concentration camp, who is German… because there were German people there too. And that idea came to me and… we have some friends, they’re a couple, he’s German, she’s Spanish, and he’d always make this joke: “Oh god, it’s war again, we will be guilty again!” And I thought, “There were also German people like his grandfather, a poet, who were totally against the war and fought against the Nazis. And that must have been so hard, like in France with Vichy, when we had to fight.”
I created my story. And when I’d finished the skeleton of it, I was like, “Oh, it's a crime story!” But I didn’t intend for it to be. I think there’s an appeal to crime stories, because it’s more about the mystery than the crime itself. The mystery of why people do things. We can all think, “Oh god, I’d like to kill my mother-in-law, or my kid,” when they spill something. Those are just words. We’d never actually do it. We don’t even think of doing it. So how do these human beings, a small proportion, actually go through with it? They do it. How?
When you think about it, it's insane to take someone’s life. And that's a mystery. And depending on the crime, it’s a mystery of how this person did it or how we are going to find out who did it. Sometimes both. And that’s why I think the genre’s popular – it’s a treasure hunt to find out about the past, about the “why”, because the question is always in the present but the answer is in the past. I think it wasn’t a non-choice, but it just happened, basically.
You’ve mentioned Guy de Maupassant as an inspiration. What is it about his work that draws you to him? Are there specific themes, styles, or qualities in his writing that you find particularly compelling?
I wouldn’t dare compare myself to him, but you know, when you read the classics, you realise how exceptional the prose is. For example, I was reading some poems recently, just a week or so ago, and there was a description of the sun that was just… amazing. There’s still some way to go for me, you know? It was as if you were watching the sun itself. Just mind-blowing. But beyond that, what’s amazing – and I think Maupassant has this, thinking of Le Horla – is the sense of setting. You’re there. You’re immediately surrounded by it. And the characters, even from a different century, feel so real.
That's why I've been trying to read more classics lately instead of just crime stories. I read them a long time ago, with the mind of a teenager, or maybe someone in their early twenties. I didn’t have the tools or knowledge I have now. There was a classic I read again to learn, because we learn from the masters. So, it could be Maupassant or Zola. From The Count of Monte Cristo, I’m learning about revenge and redemption, but really more about revenge…
My first love as a reader was Hercule Poirot from Agatha Christie. That detective was special because you can read a book and think, “Wow, that character’s great,” like the Count of Monte Cristo. But Hercule Poirot, he felt alive. He was there. The Mysterious Affair at Styles… when I read it, I thought, “This guy is wonderful.” I kept coming back to meet him and Miss Marple. I wanted to encounter them again and again.
Let’s talk about one of your latest titles, Yule Island. It’s set in, and I apologise in advance if I mispronounce this: Storholmen—
Yes, Storholmen. You did very well! It means “big island” in Swedish.
It’s a secluded island in the archipelago. Why did you choose this particular setting?
Oh, it has a whole story! So, it was four years ago, just during COVID. At the end of 2020, we were living in London and had decided that I would move back to the South of France. I can work from anywhere, but I wanted to be close to my family, my sister. We wanted to live together. What happened is that because of Brexit and then COVID, my husband had to move closer to his clients. He works in finance, and his clients are all in northern countries. So, within a couple of months, all our plans just vanished. And we had to move to Sweden.
We had to find schools for the kids. They knew the language – not writing it, but they were speaking it because my husband speaks it. He’s Swedish. They were speaking Swedish, French, and English, but my eldest didn’t know how to write. He was seven or eight at the time. He had to learn how to write it. We ended up on that island because it had a very good school. We had friends living there, the school was wonderful, and it was 15 minutes from the city center and not too far from the airport, as I travel a lot.
When I arrived, it took me a while to adjust; it was a shock. I had planned to go back to my roots. Suddenly, we were close to Stockholm, and I was too late to write my book. The move took so long with three kids who were adapting to the climate and kept getting sick. I couldn’t work. A friend who lived there said, “Johana, you should write about the East Coast. You always read about the West Coast.” I needed a story about Stockholm.
She said, “There’s a ghost not too far from you.” “What are you talking about?” I asked. She said, “You’ve never heard about the ghost of Storholmen?” I hadn’t. I asked, “What is Storholmen?” And she said it was just four minutes by boat from the island. There was a house that was built, and now it is completely destroyed (I changed that in my book). It used to belong to a very rich couple, and apparently the lady is haunting the place because she never wanted to leave.
I thought, “That’s nuts! I need to go there and see.” It was summer and I took the kids and the boat to the pedestrian island. They have no cars. So I arrived there with my husband and three kids. As I said, we can see it from our island, it’s very close. It was a beautiful day, but the moment we set foot on the island, the silence! It was the creepiest place ever. We spent a couple of hours there, and the atmosphere was intense. I went with my husband to the manor, which was completely destroyed; there was even a squatter inside. It had a crazy atmosphere.
I went back to our island and looked for a book about the place. There was one in Swedish at the museum, so I translated parts of it. I learned more about the story and thought, “I need to write about this.” And so I did.
Before becoming a novelist, you worked as a journalist. How has that background shaped your approach to fiction? Do you find that journalistic precision or attention to detail influences the way you craft your stories?
The first thing I knew was that it would be very hard to get published. I just knew it would be hard. It has nothing to do with being good or not good. You need a bit of luck, you need to know the right people, or you need luck, which I probably had.
My background gave me a strong focus on research. I’m very methodical and obsessed with fact-checking. It needs to be accurate, especially when I talk about history. You can create a false village, but you don’t mess with historical facts because those are real people who suffered, and you need to respect their memory and their experiences.
I’m also a very disciplined person. When I set a task, I do it. I’m very organised – I have to be with three children. I plan my work the way I plan a menu for the week. I can’t wait for inspiration because that’s when I need to deal with the kids. That might work for single people or maybe when I retire, but now, I have to be organised.
I’m not sure if it was journalism, but studying political science taught me a lot. It requires hard work. We had to learn a lot quickly, which taught me to read fast, take notes, and prioritise. Our brains are wired differently; some people have photographic memories. For me, I need to colour-code to make things stick. I learned tricks that made me more efficient as a journalist. But honestly, I think it’s more the fact that I was a reader. Being a reader gives you a sense of how to tell a story.
You can always tell when a writer is not a reader.
Yes, I think so. It’s because you have a way – no one told me, for example, “You need to create hunger” or “Put this at the beginning or end.” It was just natural. I just did it because I had a sense of how to tell a story and hopefully hook the reader.
It becomes muscle memory after a point.
Yes, I think so. Absolutely.
Yule Island feels like a work of Nordic noir. Did you have to adjust your style when writing in that genre, or was your approach a deliberate departure?
You know, it’s funny because I never think about what I’m doing. Let me give you an example. I’ve co-written a book – hopefully, this series will do well. I co-wrote it with a Norwegian colleague, and we started with the first book about a psychologist who specialises in memory and reads body language. I just wanted to tell her story. My inspiration was a woman named Carrie Voss, who is American-Norwegian.
Now, I’m preparing my next solo book and thinking about my characters. I have an idea about a girl who I call a “fixer,” but I'm just going from there. I dream and I think. I don’t think, “Is this Nordic noir, is this French noir?” The only thing that’s happening now, because my books are successful, is that my publisher in France is telling me things like “Don’t do this,” or “Do that.” For example, she told me, “Now you stay in Sweden.” And that’s great because I want to stay in Sweden. It’s so interesting for me to look at Sweden with the eye of a Southerner.
When you read a Nordic noir, they might tell you, “It’s dinner time,” but what you don’t know is dinner time for them is 5 pm. Or when they say, “Oh, but now it’s dark,” but it’s only 2 pm! I explain these things, like taking off your shoes when you enter a house. I love it when a culture looks at another culture. It makes us think. I had this idea while telling my story.
For Block 46, a literary critic told me – it was my first interview ever – “Did you realise how dangerous it was to compare the industrialisation of death with serial crimes?” And I was like, “Uhh.” I just wanted to tell the story of my serial killer, his father, and Emilie Roy. Thank God.
You don’t concern yourself with these questions when you’re writing.
No, I don’t. Afterward, people – I think we all do it – put labels like “French noir” or “Nordic noir” for sales. But for me, it’s about my characters. Yule Island, for example, is really about Emma and Carl and the children at the start. They are stories about lost souls.
Violence is a prominent element in your books, fitting, given the crime genre and your focus on serial killers. How do you approach portraying violence in a way that serves the narrative without crossing into gratuitousness? What balance do you aim for between impact and restraint?
It’s a difficult balance, definitely. My friends always laugh at me because I really can’t watch horror movies or anything gory.
Oh, wow. I’m surprised!
I can’t. When there’s too much gore, with blood and all that, I just can’t. I can’t watch horror movies; I’m scared like a kid. I’d have nightmares. I’d be holding onto my best friend’s arm, who loved them. My sister used to watch them – not anymore – but I can’t. And it has nothing to do with motherhood; it was the same before. Nightmares.
So, the first time people told me Block 46 was very dark, I was like, “Really? It’s dark?” Then my sister said, “Yeah, you have this and that, you have that.” And I think I just… it is really dark. And there is violence. For example, I try to suggest what’s going on whenever I can.
In Block 46, there’s that scene – I have a very visual imagination, so I see these scenes in detail – it’s funny I still remember it, when they found the children in Hampstead Heath. I just wanted to show the hair floating in the grave, the dark hair. I love it when it’s suggested. It’s the same in movies. I love when you can see the horror not by looking at the act itself, but by looking at the eyes of someone who witnesses it. When you write, it’s harder, I think, to show that, but when I can, I do that.
And if there is violence, I think what I’m trying to do – not sure I’m succeeding – is make it have a meaning. It has to have a reason, and it has to have existed. The tracheotomy, for example, in Block 46 – that existed. There was a serial killer doing that, and psychologically, it has a big meaning, stopping people from talking: “You don't talk, you don't see.”
And yes. Even in the second one, the subject was cannibalism. But I don’t describe the gory details. It’s just suggested. After that, it’s your imagination. You might say, “Oh my god, that’s horrible,” but if you read the page, I’m not describing it in detail.
Is that a purposeful choice? I find the absence of description to be even more haunting.
I do it because I wouldn’t want to read it. It’s enough to know what’s happening. It’s enough to know that there’s a lady underneath and that she’s going to make a very nice pâté afterward, a very nice salt pastry. It existed, and it has a meaning, but I don’t need to see it; I know what’s going to happen.
Novels that suggest rather than describe tend to be more terrifying because the reader’s imagination fills in the gaps. Do you believe that the power of suggestion lies in its ability to tap into the reader’s subconscious fears, allowing them to project their own unsettling imagery?
Wider, of course. Exactly. What you just said – when imagination takes over, it's just like, wow. We each have our own fears we feed into. And you know, there are characters that I don’t particularly describe…
It's funny, this book I co-wrote with a Norwegian author. I had to describe the main character as blonde, blue-eyed – or maybe green, but I think blue. My co-writer then said, “Oh, our main character? For me, she’s brunette.” He said, “You can say whatever, but for me, she’s brunette.” It’s funny how we all portray main characters in a certain way.
That’s often why when a bestseller gets adapted for the screen, you get an outcry like, “Oh, that’s not the main character!” And the poor actor has to deal with it, which isn’t their fault. We all see our ideal. For me, a Norwegian woman is blonde, blue-eyed, tall, curvy, and powerful. It’s the opposite for my colleague. It’s a funny thing, and that’s the beauty of books.
So, you serendipitously became a crime novelist. Is this the genre you want to stay in, or are you hoping to venture into others?
Well, you know, this is the thing: because my books are doing really well, my publisher doesn’t want me to change genres. That's the price of success, I suppose. Readers tend to stick to one genre, especially with crime. If I said to my publisher or agent, “Hello, I want to write a love story now,” they’d think I was nuts.
So, I think if I were really to write what I want, I’d dive into my family history. I’d explore my grandfather, my mother, and grandmother – the grandfather who came from a very poor Spanish immigrant family in France. They had a disabled child in the late ‘40s. I’d like to tell their story, my mother’s story, a sort of saga. I’d love to do that.
My aunt, my mother’s sister, was born in ‘49 with osteogenesis imperfecta – brittle bone disease. When she was born, my grandmother was told, “The child will die, she'll die every day.” She was a subject for studies. My mother, from a poor family, was left with a neighbour while my grandmother spent weeks in the hospital. The neighbor didn’t want to brush my mother’s hair, so she cut it. There are lots of poignant stories like that.
I’d love to use my parents’ love letters. There are so many things I’d like to do, but I need to feed my children. I can’t take years to write a book like that, you know? When they’re doing their own thing, then I’ll be able to continue writing crime and have a project like that on the side. Right now, I’m writing solo books and co-writing books, and I can tell you, I have no social life. I just take care of my boys and I work.
How does the collaboration work when you’re co-writing a book?
Oh, it’s been interesting, especially for something like crime, because it feels like it’s usually just one person doing all of that. No, but that’s what I thought too. It started because in France, we have a tradition of compiling short stories for charity, often for children. I’ve been part of many projects like that.
For one project, a friend asked me, “We’re looking for an international superstar for the book. Do you know anyone who’s not French?” They knew I was one of the few translated abroad. I said, “Of course,” and they gave me two names: Thomas Enger and another Icelandic author. I contacted Thomas. He said, “I have a story in Norwegian. My father, a former French teacher, could translate it for you, and you can polish it.” It sounded great.
So his father translated it, and I started working with him. We became friends, even though he was as old as my dad and I was living in London and he in Norway. We discovered we both had connections to the Second World War and Buchenwald concentration camps; his friends were there and so was my grandfather. We exchanged books. After the translation, I started working with Thomas to see if it was what he wanted to say. We were on the phone, and we knew each other from touring together with two publishers we had in common. We realised we were kindred spirits and loved working together.
I told him, “There’s a project I could never do: I wanted Emilie Roy to be a body language specialist. I find body language fascinating. It’s a science used by the FBI, in business, by poker players.” I said, “I can’t do all the research for that; I already had to research profiling and World War II.” He said, “Well, should we have a look?”
It was during COVID, so it was nice to have someone in my field to talk to, and we started daydreaming about it. After COVID, around 2023, we talked to people about it, and they thought it was crazy and interesting. We asked our publishers for six months to write the novel, and they agreed.
We wrote it in English with a wonderful agent who was completely hooked. I did the research for everything, since I love it. I focused on the main character, and he focused on the others. Now, whenever I have a book idea, I call him. It’s like a ping-pong match. We bounce ideas off each other. Two brains are better than one, and that’s what happened with that story. My strength is the psychology; I ask questions to make everything psychologically logical. He’s very good with plot details, like how the shadow of a bicycle can indicate the time. With both our brains, it was so cool. We had so much fun. My husband always said, “You're not a team player,” but I realised that wasn’t true. I am a team player.
For me, I enjoy a lot of feedback. I love it. I’d never say, “Don’t correct that sentence.” On the contrary – tell me what you think. That’s why every time I write a chapter, I send it to my father. He knows – it’s like a ritual. At the end of the day, a chapter’s written, I send it to him, and he comes back with corrections. He also doesn’t know where the story is going.
He’s your first editor.
Yes, my father is my first editor, and always has been. He always will be. So, I send it to my father, it comes back, and then I send it to Thomas.
How does that work though? I’m guessing Thomas doesn’t understand French.
Yes, Thomas can’t read it directly because it’s in French, so I quickly put it through Google Translate. The point is not the language; it’s the plot. Thomas usually knows where the plot is going, so he tells me, “Oh, you mean that? And what about that?”
He can’t comment on my prose like my dad would, telling me, “Don’t put that adjective here.’”But with the plot, he can pinpoint things. I know some colleagues hate that; they don’t like people saying, “No, this is my way,” but I’m not like that. I love it. I love someone saying, “What about that?” and being able to say “No, because then I'm doing that, so I can’t do this.” I love working with someone.
That’s why I think when people write series – TV series or movies – they have a writers’ room. It must be so much fun because we all bring our own baggage and experience. That’s what I tell my husband; I’m not a team player with him, because he doesn’t collaborate with me, he just lets me do my own thing. But it must be so much fun to have someone say, “Oh, how about solving it this way?” And I’m like, “Yes! Let’s do it!”
To write with someone, I also need someone who understands. When my kids are sick, they’re my priority, but I can work later. Thomas is the same kind of parent; he understands. If we’re on the phone and my kid says, “Mama, I’m in the toilet,” I just say, “Two seconds,” and come back. It’s never a problem. Being a mother is part of who I am, and he really understands. It flows so naturally.
It’s also interesting to have a male and a female perspective. I can ask him, “Would a guy really do this?” and he’ll say no. And it’s the same for me. I’ll tell him, “Oh, a girl wouldn't open up to a guy like that after this happened.”
Do you think envy often accompanies a writer’s relationship with another writer?
Maybe it’s not in my character, but I’ve never felt envy. I'm happy for people when they succeed; it genuinely makes me happy for them.
No, but of course, I think that’s also a state of mind. If you’re envious in general, you’ll likely be envious in the book business. But we’re all different. It’s interesting how different writers are in their approach. Some don’t plan at all, while I’m a planner. I don’t agree when people say planning is wrong, or not planning is wrong. The right way is your way. If you’re published and have readers, it works.
