How Does Writing Fantasy Prepare You to Write Spy Thrillers? - A Guest Post

I'm happy to welcome Jason Maurer to Cozy Up With Kathy today. Jason is working to introduce Danish author Tobias Bukkehave to the English-speaking world. Tobias's first novel, FOR KING AND COUNTRY, has just been translated into English.

How does writing fantasy prepare you to write spy thrillers?
By Jason Maurer

How does writing fantasy prepare you to write spy thrillers?

It’s an odd question, I know, but bear with me. I ask it because it’s the path that an author I’m working with—Tobias Bukkehave, a Danish author and screenwriter—has followed in his writing career. He wrote two fantasy books for children about a boy named Elmer Balthazar and then abruptly changed tack with the gritty but relatable espionage novel FOR KING AND COUNTRY (Kongetro), released earlier this year in Danish and forthcoming (with your help) in English.

I’m a fantasy writer myself—though I’m far from a stranger of the cozy village mysteries of G. K. Chesterton and Agatha Christie—but Bukkehave has converted me to the shadowy hygge of Scandinavian thrillers, where as much time is spent relishing characters’ consumption of coffee and pastries as laying out the insidious plots and personal betrayals so intrinsic to the genre. His cinematic yet distinctly Danish approach to thrillers, coupled with his career, got me thinking—does writing fantasy prepare you for writing about spies?

I’d say so. The twists and hidden connections that wend their way through spy thrillers, which show us that we can’t trust anything or anybody, aren’t so different from the more overt twists to the nature of reality in fantasy. Those are about hidden connections, too. Embodying the corrupting force of power in a golden ring, say, or the melting pot of the United States in a clash between new and old gods. They’re about showing that we can’t trust our perceptions of how things are either.

Characters are another (albeit more obvious) connection. What turns people onto fantasy, in my experience, isn’t the presence of dragons, magic, and the like, but rather having that one character who worms his/her way into their heart, who opens the floodgates of possibilities. Bukkehave’s Tom Cortzen did that for me, made me care about the rules of the game. But with genre fiction, it’s a balancing act, too. You want them to feel real but larger than life, empathetic but odd, familiar but exciting.

That brings me to my final point: escapism. Both fantasy and espionage are about at once taking you away from the familiar and about telling you what that familiar is. By subverting the commonplace—whether it’s by showing us the hidden powers governing our societies or the hidden worlds in our wardrobes—both genres help us dive into somewhere new but familiar, somewhere from which we can safely withdraw anytime but also somewhere that teaches us a little about the place we’re returning to.

Bukkehave’s approach to the spy thriller feels exciting and new, perhaps because he brings to it what I love about fantasy. But it also feels like a world that even veteran thriller lovers would get swept into, one that pushes the hard truths about living in our world even as it teaches us not to trust everything we see…

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Blurb

First Lieutenant Tom Cortzen is back in Denmark, even though he swore he’d never return—not after what happened in Iraq. Even worse, it’s to attend the funeral of his father, Rear Admiral Richard Cortzen, for whom everything began and ended with God, king, and country. But even as he says his goodbyes, Tom receives a tap on the shoulder from an old soldier friend: Denmark needs him. A top Iranian programmer has been murdered and his Danish girlfriend has disappeared. While such a case wouldn’t normally impinge on Denmark’s security, the military intelligence envoy to the Middle East seems to have been murdered by the same shadowy mercenary group—and he just so happened to have been Tom’s old friend. Divided between serving a country that betrayed him and honoring his friend, Tom begins a pulse-pounding adventure that will lead him from the rich sprawl of Dubai back to the regal stonework of Copenhagen. With unmistakable inspiration from writers such as John le Carré, Jan Guillou, and Jens Henrik Jensen, and from TV and film series like Homeland and Jason Bourne, Tobias Bukkehave débuts as a writer for adults with FOR KING AND COUNTRY, a high-octane spy thriller on the abuse of power, international conspiracy, and nationalism in a world where borders are increasingly being tightened.

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Buy Link

We're working hard to get FOR KING AND COUNTRY sold to an English publisher. If you're interested in the book, please let us know by sending an email to forkingandcountrybook@gmail.com, as every little bit helps!
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Tobias Bio

Tobias Bukkehave was born in Svendborg, Denmark, in 1980. He débuted in 2018 with the children’s novels The Journey to Arkadia and The Threat from Kragoria, both about a young boy called Elmer Baltazar. The Journey to Arkadia was nominated for the Orla Children’s Book Prize. Bukkehave also works as a screenwriter for film and television. He lives in Copenhagen with his partner and two children.

 

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Jason Maurer Bio

Jason Maurer was born in New Hampshire, raised in Vermont, educated in Scotland, found love in Finland, and found a life in Sweden. He’s currently completing an MA in media and communications at Malmö University and interning at the Danish marketing company Onlinestrategen.dk. He’s written two short stories and is finishing a novel.