Tuva Moodyson Mystery Series 3 Books Collection Set By Will Dean (Dark Pines, Red Snow, Black River)

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Maya Lindh's narration was superb - for me, she was Tuva! I was so tempted to roll straight into #2 when I saw it was available at my library, but I made myself practice some restraint. I'll go there soon though, and it will be audio again. The murders happen close to Mossen Village, an out-of-the-way very small community of houses in Utgard forest. Along the way of Tuva's investigation, she meets a plethora of characters from this village, all very bizarre in their own individual way. The scene is set in darkening autumn days in Sweden and the storytelling has an chaotic nature which is certainly intended. Tuva veers of to investigate a lead but ends up doing something else. She starts off to meet with her mother but she never gets there. Some small clues end nowhere. It all adds to a sense that this whole little hamlet is askew, that something in the atmosphere is wrong. Very Twin Peaks indeed ! Apart from the hot case Tuva is working as a reporter, there a some harrowing themes presented here: the loss of parents, the cruelty of hunting wildlife, the viciousness of small town gossip including racism, sexism, xenophobia and religious finger pointing. Add to that the impact of social media - today's ultimate propaganda tool for gossipers worldwide, and you have a nauseous melting pot of the lowest category of human beings cleverly depicted. In a way, I found all this much more to stomach than the actual killing by the psychopath.

Nordic noir at it's finest! What a compelling story this was. This is a slow burning novel but never once did I lose interest. Our main character Tuva is a deaf, bi-sexual reporter whom I've become seriously attached to. She is such a wonderful character that you just can't help but root for her. The scenery depictions really sets the atmosphere of this novel. I almost felt like I was in Sweden while reading it. Poor Tuva. She had a nice girlfriend in previous novels but then SHE ended up in a coma. Tuva is still caring for her and as a result, she is in a dark place and a confused place. The set up for what is to come is deliciously dark Tuva is a deaf journalist, able to hear with a hearing aid, she likes turning it off and disconnecting herself from the world. She lives in northern Sweden which is a tight community- not seemingly welcoming change, or open minds. Detached from her dying mother, she is a lone soul with a will to make the career move to move away from the area.I also enjoyed the eccentric but complex cast of characters that inhabit the handful of houses that make up Mossen village: an ex-army single father taxi driver, obsessed with mice and his haunted son; two sisters hand-carving Trolls augmented with animal and body parts; a ghost writer who refuses to fit in with local conventions and is still suspected by many locals of an earlier, unsolved set of related murders; an obsessive animal rights activist; and then the leader of the local hunting group, the most popular man in the town but with his own secrets.

Further Tuva has additional complexities to her character: her fear of the wild; the loss of her father and the longer lasting repercussions of that, including the impact it has on her victim’s family-sensitive approach to journalism; her ever present guilt over the conflict between her career ambitions and her need to look after her mother – which lead her to uneasy short and long term compromises (including her very move to a small Swedish town) which fail to satisfy either requirement – and some quirks (mainly wine gums and gaming). The climax and solution to the murders is a bit of a surprise, but the presentation is clumsy, drawn out, pacing poor. Almost an info-dump. Rose Farm is home to a group of survivalists, completely cut off from the outside world. Until now. While I wasn't surprised when the killer was revealed, this 3-star read gets bumped up to 3.5 after the resolution and vindication. It was easy to read but I wasn't really engaged. Will sets us on a remote farm with a lovely name – Rose Farm – but despite Shakespeare saying “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” this is not the case here. There is a smell – a dark, raw smell about the place. A murder suicide took place here many years ago. A father killed his entire family leaving only the baby behind.The scene came to Dean in 2016, one night as he lay awake in bed. “I was in that strange time between wakefulness and sleep, and I saw very flat, featureless fields with a little tumbledown cottage. Then I saw a woman there,” he says. “She looked like she was living a fairly normal life there, but I knew she couldn’t leave. I wanted to understand why, and I wanted to understand her story. That night between midnight and 6am, the whole book came to me.” A vast, dark, Swedish forest, a deaf print-journalist and the suspected return of a serial killer from the past -- these are the main ingredients for this fabulous concoction of Scandi Noir from British ex-pat author Will Dean. It's the first in a series that I'm excited to have discovered for myself. Tuva is an outsider to the community. She moved to the community to be closer to her mum who has deteriorating health issues. She walks a narrow line where locals are critical of her for creating bad press for the town. Tuva is ambitious and curious, digging further into the murders, despite hostility from the town and Police, receiving strange gifts and putting herself in danger. There are some genuinely gripping moments and the characters are wonderfully realised (loved the Troll-making ladies)! I also loved that the main character was deaf - nice to see, and added an interesting twist to many of the scenarios, where you'd traditionally rely on sound. And the environment - brilliantly depicted, I could really imagine it.