New thriller by bestselling author Giles Kristian (Class of 1994)

For fans of the latest Bond film No Time to Die and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Where Blood Runs Cold is the gripping snowbound survival thriller from the no.1 Sunday Times bestselling author Giles Kristian.

Deep in Norway’s Arctic Circle, Erik Amdahl and his daughter Sofia are taking a long-awaited father-daughter trip, four days cross-country skiing and camping across the frozen snowbound landscape.

Seeking shelter at the home of a local Sami family on the first night of their trip, they witness a brutal cold-blooded murder and flee for their lives across the snow.

Hunted through the mountains by masked men on snowmobiles, Erik and Sofia must ski through one of the toughest landscapes on earth.  As the mercury plummets a desperate fight ensues – of man against man and man against nature – a fight for survival that plays out across the snow and ice.

A story of endurance and the human will to survive, Where Blood Runs Cold is also the story of a father’s struggle to come to terms with his daughter growing up, with his own mortality and knowing when to let go – and a daughter’s determination to prove herself worthy of her father’s love, and the determination to survive at all costs – whatever it takes…

Giles Kristian has sold over a million copies of his critically acclaimed Sunday Times bestselling historical novels which have been translated into more than twenty languages and seen him dubbed the heir to Bernard Cornwell. He co-wrote the international no. 1 bestseller Golden Lion with Wilbur Smith and his Viking novel, God of Vengeance, was a Times Book of the Year. Having staked his claim in the historical fiction charts for over a decade, Where Blood Runs Cold is Giles’s first contemporary thriller.

Giles, who is half-Norwegian on his mother’s side, has himself skied and camped in the Norwegian mountains as Erik and Sofia do in the novel. In 2003 Giles went on a cross-country ski trip with his brother and a bunch of hardened Norwegians, skiing and building igloos to spend the night in. Despite being incredibly fit and having all the right gear, Giles and his brother realized they had bitten off more than they could chew and, halfway through the trip, they made a bid for civilization. But the expedition had sown the seeds of an idea for the story that would become Where Blood Runs Cold.

 Praise for Giles Kristian:

 ‘A masterpiece in the true sense of the word.’ Conn Iggulden

‘Astonishing and riveting.’ Bernard Cornwell

 ‘Action-packed storytelling which stirs the blood and thrills the soul.’ Wilbur Smith

 ‘A powerful, dark vision of Arthur’s Britain, where the worst monsters are human.’ The Times

‘Intense and powerful . . . written with deep expression and enormous feeling.’  Sunday Express

‘Impossible to put down…No one does this better.’ Dr Janina Ramirez

About the Author

During the 90s Giles Kristian was lead singer of pop group Upside Down, achieving four top twenty hit records, performing on Top of the Pops as well as at the Royal Albert Hall, N.E.C. and Wembley Arena, and supporting artists including The Spice Girls, Take That, and Eric Clapton. As a singer-songwriter he lived and toured for two years in Europe and has made music videos all over the world, from Prague, Miami, Mexico and the Swiss Alps, to Bognor Regis! To fund his writing habit, he has worked as a model, appearing in TV commercials and ads for Walls Ice Cream (he was Magnum Man!), Canon Cameras and two brands of lager. He has worked as an advertising copywriter and lived for three years in New York, where he wrote copy for movie marketing company Empire Design but mainly worked on his first novel, RAVEN: Blood Eye.

Giles, who is half-Norwegian, was inspired by his family history to write his first historical novels: the acclaimed and bestselling RAVEN Viking trilogy – Blood Eye, Sons of Thunder and Odin’s Wolves. For his next series, he drew on a long-held fascination with the English Civil War to chart the fortunes of a family divided by this brutal conflict in The Bleeding Land and Brothers’ Fury. Giles also co-wrote Wilbur Smith’s No.1 bestseller, Golden Lion. In The Rise of Sigurd novels – God of Vengeance, Winter’s Fire, and Wings of the Storm – he returned to the world of the Vikings to tell the story of Sigurd and his celebrated fictional fellowship. His Sunday Times bestseller, Lancelot, is currently in development for TV with a major studio. His latest novel, Camelot, is out now in paperback.

Inspiration for the novel

If Giles’s own experience skiing in Norway fired his imagination, it was a famous story of survival in the Norwegian mountains that added fuel to this fire and inspired Where Blood Runs Cold.

Operation Martin involved a team of expatriate Norwegian commandos who sailed from the Shetland Islands back into Nazi-occupied Norway in March 1943. Their aim to destroy a German airfield control tower at Bardufoss, and recruit for the Norwegian resistance movement. However, the men were betrayed and ambushed, their boat sunk by the Germans. Three were killed. One escaped. The one that got away was Jan Baalsrud. Soaking wet and missing a boot, he escaped and what followed has to be one of the most remarkable survival stories of all time.

Over nine weeks, Jan Baalsrud would endure hardships almost beyond imagining. His feet would freeze solid, he would be buried up to his neck by an avalanche. Snowblind and frostbitten, he would wander lost in a snowstorm for three days, become entombed in snow for four days and be left abandoned for two weeks. To prevent the spread of gangrene, he used a knife to cut off several of his frostbitten toes.  Eventually, he would lie tied to a stretcher, near death, as teams of Norwegian villagers dragged him up and down snow-covered mountains. Despite all this, he somehow endured. Jan Baalsrud survived what would surely have killed anyone else. The man simply refused to die.

This story of survival captured Giles’s imagination, but it was becoming a father that really inspired him to find the beating heart of Where Blood Runs Cold. To delve into a parent’s fears for their children, to face up to their own mortality, and to provoke the reader to ask themselves the question, How far would I go?

Press Enquiries

For more information please contact Tory Lyne-Pirkis at tory.lyne-pirkis@midaspr.co.uk or 07765503053