Review - Red Snow by Will Dean

Red Snow (Tuva Moodyson 2)
Will Dean
Point Blank, 10 January 2019
HB, 389pp

I'm grateful to Point Blank for an advance copy of Red Snow.

Like its predecessor, Dark Pines, Red Snow focusses on Tuva Moodyson, ace reporter for local paper the Gavrik Posten. Moodyson is a magnificent creation - it would be easy to describe her with a string of labels; Deaf, bisexual, borderline alcoholic... but in reality, she walks of Dean's pages as much more than that, a rounded and vulnerable young woman still mourning the loss of her mother and mired in guilt.

That makes her especially sympathetic when a series of calamities befalls a local liquorice factory, and its owners, the Grimbergs - three women of different generations, including young student Karin, who are left bereft, guilty and endangered.

If Moodyson gives this book heart and a recognisable, relatable focus, the Grimbergs are plain weird and present fascinating - and difficult - subjects for investigation. There are (at least) two facets to this. First, the series of events is so varied that it's hard to see them as the work of a single hand. There is a suicide, road accidents, a murder and much more, so that what's going on seems to have more affinity with a curse than with criminal activity. (The Grimbergs certainly take it that way, relying on a bewildering array of superstitious "precautions" to defend them against the "old evil").

Secondly, the family is reclusive, inward looking and almost fortified in their grand "residence" above the factory. No one is else is allowed in - even meals have to be passed one by one through the velvet curtain - and Tuva soon finds that who is available for interview, and what they're prepared to talk about, is as idiosyncratic as the nature of the events themselves.

To add to all this, Grimberg's is the town's chief employer. As she found out in Dark Pines, the good folk of Gavrik don't welcome outside scrutiny of their town and its affairs and there are already enough rumours about the factory. Is it about to be sold? Will the workers lose their jobs? Can it continue manufacturing in the tried and tested way, against competitors who have automated and brought in new ways and methods? Symbolised by the fleet of antique delivery trucks, which are not up to the rigours of a sub-Arctic winter, Grinberg's seems about to career off the road into a ditch, even without the series of calamities described here.

It's a fascinating background, and Tuva doesn't have much time as she's leaving town in a few days for a better job, and warmer weather, in the south of the country. That, to me, introduced a note of regret and unease to the story. Over the course of the book she is packing up her stuff, arranging to ship out and saying goodbye to people and things. While Tuva does't have much affection for the place she refers to as "Toytown" this all takes its toll - especially the prospect of leaving her beloved Tammy - and by the end of the book she's barely holding things together. Tuva really is a character you can feel for and the sense of stress, of loss, of guilt (as well as her bad choices - she makes many!) really piles on the tension. I almost felt as though either the crime spree, or Tuva's personal issues, could have made a book in themselves and having them collide meant at times I became frustrated when the writing had to break off from one to deal with the other.

This is a tense, readable and engrossing book, with Tuva really goes through the mill here. She's not helped by becoming reacquainted with some of the creepier characters from Dark Pines - the two wood carving sisters, stalkery taxi driver Viggo, and the ghost writer and experimental chef David Holmqvist who's writing a book on the Grimbergs and lists Tuva as his researcher.

I hope she makes a quick recovery from the events of Red Snow in time for more books - while she may have escaped the extremes of the winter weather, I have a feeling she'll find as many dark corners in the south as in Gavrik Commune and I want to hear about them soon!

Red Snow is out on 10 January and you will be able to buy it from your local bookshop, from Hive, Waterstones, Blackwells and Amazon.