Alex Dahl

Alexandria Bockfeldt Dahl (born 1982), known as Alex Dahl, is an American/Norwegian crime novelist who writes in the Nordic noir genre. Her works have been translated into twelve languages, and she was described by Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet in 2019 as a new star of Nordic noir literature.^[1]

Background

She was born in Oslo to a Norwegian father and an American mother, and grew up in West End Oslo. She is a native speaker of both Norwegian and English. She studied Russian, German and international studies in Oslo and Moscow, before earning a creative writing degree from Bath Spa University and a management degree from the University of Bath. She lives in London.^[1]

Work

Her first novel, Før jeg forlater deg (Before I Leave You), was published in Norwegian under the name Alexandra Bockfeldt in 2013.^[2]

In 2018 her first English-language novel, The Boy at the Door, was published by Penguin Random House. The book was one of the most widely sold e-books in England at the time and was described by The Times as one of "the best crime fiction" books published in 2018.^[3] It has been translated into ten languages.^[4][5][6]

In 2019 she published the novel The Heart Keeper.^[1] In 2020, Dahl published Playdate.^[7]

Adaptations

Her 2020 novel Playdate was adapted for a Disney+ television series The Stolen Girl, starring Holliday Grainger and Ambika Mod,^[8][9] airing from April 2025.

Bibliography

• 2013 – Før jeg forlater deg, Juritzen Forlag^[1]
• 2018 – The Boy at the Door, Penguin Random House^[1]
• 2019 – The Heart Keeper, Penguin Random House^[1]
• 2020- 'Playdate'