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

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I will absolutely never be tired of the Tuva Moodyson series, and I LOVED this newest installment of the series. Now he has set wolves on his readers. Wolves with evil eyes and the scent of blood in the air. The setting of this rural part of Sweden with the towns of Visberg and Gavrik (fictional) is just chillingly perfect. The forests have eyes, the river has snakes and there are sisters who make troll dolls.

The end (which I obviously won't give away) was, quite frankly laughably ridiculous. It did actually make me snort a couple of times and there was much eye rolling. She meets with some hostility as the locals are concerned that her news articles show the village in an unfavourable light and blame her for scaring hunters away. She has made two female friends in the village which makes her time there less unbearable. The reason that the farm has gained such a reputation if you like, is that it is run by 'Preppers' - survivalists - people who are readying themselves for a state of emergency, be it war, alien invasion or perhaps even the end of the world as we know it. Now the community at Rose Farm are not so far gone that they are expecting an alien invasion (at least I don't think they are), but they are a very self sufficient and closeted community who grown their own food, hunt and train to defend themselves against the outside world. Will Dean has done a brilliant job of drawing us into their world, making each of the characters we meet stand out, but not in a crazed, fanatic kind of way. In fact, with the exception of the reclusive Abraham who we never really meet, they are almost conspicuous by how normal they are - how down to earth, if a little insular. We get to see them as Tuva does, trying to understand their motivations for living as they do and what, if any, link this has to the missing woman> Certainly Tuva’s deafness is an important part of the novel – and an interesting one. For example: the sensitivity to sound on the edge of the aural spectrum; the ability to turn off the hearing aid and effectively zone out aurally; the challenges of lip reading; the sensitivity to condescension about speaking skills; and hearing aid battery power as an addition to the 21st century journalists version of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – Wifi, GPS, mobile signal and mobile battery.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. Lars told me once that his TV is his best friend and his broadband connection is his family, especially in the winter months. He said they keep him going. TV and coffee and alcohol: the holy trinity of cold countries. If you're a regular bloke with a regular job, I get it. If you're a reporter, your phone, Ipad and camera are so crucial to doing your job that they should always be charging when not in use. In the small town where Tuva worked, the electronics weren't always in use. Dean met his Swedish wife in his first week of university in London. An “awkward, shy, weird, bookish kid”, he’d decided to study law at London School of Economics because “that’s the thing you do if nobody in your family has been to university before – you study something that leads directly to a job”. While this book can definitely be read as a standalone do be aware that it references a lot of content from the previous books, but it doesn’t name any names in terms of who did what.

Are these murders linked to The Medusa murders 20 years ago? The police failed to find the culprit for these crimes, so is this person still at large? By the way, those victims had their eyes removed as well. There are some genuinely suspenseful passages, often in the woods. But I found the ‘little wooden trolls’ a bit troublesome. See, the spooky sisters who made these trolls use real fingernails, animal tongues, human hair and the like – they sound horrible. Secondly this enables Dean to give an English perspective on some some quirks of language (he is particularly fond of examining the expression “he has a nice economy”), the menacing countryside captured in the book’s title and the hunting based local society. This outside/English based perspective is given some fictional resonance by having his main protagonist as something of an outsider herself – a Swede who lived in England (as an intern at the Guardian no less) and has had the chance to examine her own country’s cultural assumptions and linguistic quirks, and a natural City dweller and internationalist wary of the countryside and insular society in which she now lives. Rather than it just being a copycat pastiche of the many impressive Scandi crime novels out there, it turns out that Dean himself has left the U.K. and now lives in Sweden, so has some real experience to draw upon. We're constantly being reminded that Tuva is deaf. It seemed to me that maybe the author thought that we'd forget and wanted us to remember because it may or may not play a role later on. Tuva is always fidgeting with the dials on her hearing aids, putting them in, taking them out, covering them so they don't get wet. I get it - she's deaf. I have a great-uncle that uses aids and people are always commenting on how he's constantly messing with the volume, so maybe this is a thing and I'm wrong. As for characters…this book was RICH with some fantastic, well developed characters that had me curious throughout! I wanted to know EVERYTHING about them – and Will Dean did not disappoint. I will mention just a few though as I think this is the type of book where you have to EXPERIENCE everything and my own views may differ from others.Tuva Moodyson is now on my list of favourite characters- no doubt about that! After leaving London to help her mother, Tuva finds herself working in a small town newspaper office as a reporter. Tuva is deaf – though she can hear with the use of hearing aids. I love how she switches off her hearing aids when she wants to shut out the world. I also loved that she was determined that her hearing impairment doesn’t define her. I suspect there is a lot more for the reader to learn about this character, especially relating to her life in London as we really only scratch the surface – Eeeek! I can’t wait! All writers have to do their best. If you write from a place of maximum empathy, and you really care about your writing, and your storytelling, then that’s all you can do. I always try to research as well as I can and to be as sensitive as I can to my characters, and to do them justice, whoever they are,” says Dean. “It’s my job to tell the story, and it’s other people’s job to critique it. And that’s fine.”

Tuva is an astute journalist, dedicated to the Gavrik Posten. She gains unique access to the residents and of course soon finds herself in danger as she tries to expose the truth and identify the culprit with the sometimes reluctant help of the local police. A young woman goes missing within the perimeter of the farm compound. Can Tuva talk her way inside the tight-knit group to find her story? Charlotte Jones said: “ Will’s Tuva Moodyson mysteries are a delicious combination of darkly comic characters, heart-pounding tension and thrillingly unexpected outcomes. What drew me to them above all was the thoroughly modern character of Tuva herself. Not since Saga in The Bridge has there been such a compelling and unique heroine. I’m delighted that the bold and brilliant Rose Ayling-Ellis has agreed to bring Tuva to life in all her spiky, funny, messy glory.”

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. Bad Apples is a chilling outing for Tuva Moodyson – unsettling from beginning to the very end, but leavened with dark humour. A compelling thriller that devoted fans and new readers will adore.’ 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). I have read all the compelling Tuva Moodyson thrillers by Will Dean and am always glad to learn there is a new addition to the series. Tuva is an engaging character. She is a deaf newspaper reporter working in small towns in the north of Sweden. We feel the cold chill in the remote area, surrounded by dark forests where wolves and elk abound, and the nearby marshes and Snake River.