#Review - Ice Town by Will Dean

Ice Town (Tuva Moodyson, 6)

Will Dean
Hodder & Stoughton, 7 November 2024
Available as: HB, 400pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(HB): 9781399717342

I'm grateful to the publisher for  giving me access to an advance e-copy of Ice Town to consider for review.

Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's,

Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks;

The sun is spent, and now his flasks

Send forth light squibs, no constant rays;

The world's whole sap is sunk...

- John Donne

Two years on from the shocking events that rounded off Book 4 in this series, Bad Apples, Tuva is keeping on keeping on. She fell back into binge drinking, but has come through that with the support of a good friend, though unsurprisingly she is still not looking after herself very well (when does he ever?) as we see with her diet. Life in Toytown is though quiet, and perhaps Tuva needs the atmosphere of a major evolving story - so she seizes the chance to drive 20 hours north to cover the search for a missing Deaf teenager in a VERY remote town.

Esseberg is something else, even among the strange locations that Dean has given us so far in this series. Entirely surrounded by mountains, it's accessible only through a single-lane tunnel that is shared between road and rail. One must wait for a time slot to drive through and, once inside the town, there is no escape when the tunnel shuts down for the night.

This place is then even more isolated, inward looking and suspicious than Gavrik - and Tuva has no standing here, no relationship with the police, and no base to operate from (she's staying at a B&B that doesn't serve breakfast, and that is also the town's tanning salon, popular in the Winter months).

Tenacious as ever Tuva goes about her work, against a background of severe cold and short days, trying to establish what has happened to Peter even as bodies begin to turn up. Dean exploits a real flair for the gothic here vin portraying how this remote community reacts to the tragedy unfolding. Several times Tuva is put in danger - visits to the creepy hotel accessible only by chairlift are especially skin crawling. St Lucy's Day, the shortest day (and the subject of Donne's poem which I've quoted above, because that last line, The world's whole sap is sunk, just seems to me to sum up the atmosphere here) is approaching. Normally this would be a big deal as the world turns back to light, but the mood is hardly celebratory rather the villagers begin to go out only in pairs and the local biker gang patrols the streets as vigilantes.

It is great to meet Tuva again. This stubborn, lonely, and often, suffering, woman has been through a lot in earlier books but she still reaches out to help others, whether it's the missing Deaf young man here or her neighbour's kid (and at the moving climax of this book, we hear of another). Strictly she's out of her own domain and has no business here, but she sets about unpicking the threads of life in a small town, allowing us encounters with many interesting characters - whether it's the ex-con ski lift manager, the self-absorbed true crime podcaster, or creepy Eric at the hotel. As ever, Tuva has to balance the need to push these people for info, to go further than the police can, with her position as a stranger, an outsider in Ice Town, someone who may herself be at risk in a tight-knit community where survival depends on the community and somebody who throws round accusations or asks awkward questions may just slip out of that circle of support...

The writing here is good - one senses a warmth from Dean for his protagonist - and we learn more about her complicated early life, but while unexpected, the details don't come as just dropped in, it all makes sense in the context of the character. Billed as a standalone episode in the series, presumably because it's set "away", this book nevertheless feels fully integrated with what's gone before and sets up plotlines and hints for the future.

It's great to this series powering forward so strongly and I am eager to hear more about Tuva Moodyson.

For more information about Ice Town, see the publisher's website here.

#BlogTour #Review - Wolf Pack by Will Dean

Wolf Pack (Tuva Moodyson, 5)

Will Dean

Point Blank (Oneworld), 6 October 2022

Available as: HB, 302pp, e

ISBN(HB): 9780861541997

I'm grateful to Point Blank for sending me a copy of Wolf Pack to consider for review, and to Anne Cater for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

What to say about Wolf Pack? I need to be careful, but first I will get one think off my chest: TUVA MOODYSON IS BACK! YES!

That done - why do I need to be careful? 

Well, long term readers of these books will know that the previous one, Bad Apples, ended on a real cliffhanger. I won't say what that was because those who haven't read the books shouldn't have that spoiled. Nor will I share the outcome. I will though be having a word with you afterwards about why you haven't read Dark Pines, Red Snow, Black River and Bad Apples yet?

I can sum up the reason you should in three words. Tuva. Tuva. Tuva. For newcomers, Tuva is a borderline alcoholic young woman with family problems. Not fitting in is her thing -  she is Deaf and a lesbian in a resolutely conservative, hardscrabble town out in the forest wilds, a place she has previously called Toytown and here, Shitsville. Daily life brings her up against the town mentality, and as a reporter on the local paper, she's already a figure of suspicion, but her outsider-dom does give her a distinct - not judgemental - perspective on events.

Fortunately, Tuva isn't completely without friends and support when things turn upside down. In many ways, she in on a more even keel here than we have seen before. But still, you get the sense that she's hanging on by a fingernail. How much more must she take?

A lot, as it turns out. In these books Dean has delighted in showing us the stranger inhabitants of the forest. The weird sisters who make model trolls with human hair and fingernails. The entire neighbouring town of Visberg, with its sulphurous apple festival and licensed bad behaviour. The hunters who, one suspects, are more than ready to settle scores out in the woods. And a variety of killers.

In Wolf Pack, we're introduced to a colony of survivalists who live on their own compound behind barbed wire and deep ditches. Now, a young woman has gone missing from their site and there are concerns for her welfare. Can the residents of Rose Farm, where she worked, cast any light on events? Unable to crack the place, the police approach Tuva to see if she can gain access. This brings her into contact with a paranoid and closed community, intensely suspicious of the outside world - and armed to the teeth. To gain their trust, she takes part in a gruelling initiation - but will it be enough?

Wolf Pack is a wonderful addition to the Tuva series. We see the redoubtable reporter at a truly low ebb, but also determined to hold herself together and prevent - or avenge - the destruction of another young life. The rural Sweden that Dean portrays is a harsh place, with Nature tricksy and dangers abounding. Yes, that does - to a degree - push people to cooperate and help each other (as Tammy helps Tuva manage the amount she drinks) but even this can - as with the Rose Farm gang - itself become corrupted.

Tuva's obsession with finding young Elsa seems to know no limits. It's easy to see this as coming from a sense of guilt at what has happened, or a desire strike a blow against the silence, clannishness and localism of the forest people (especially those in Rose Farm) but she also, I think, has a genuine sense of justice. It is a thing that may lead her into danger - does lead her into danger - and that also may have compromised her for the future, leaving favours owed to dangerous people...

For more information about Wolf Pack, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which are listed on the poster below. 

You can buy Wolf Pack from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.

#Review - Bad Apples by Will Dean

Bad Apples (Tuva Moodyson, 4)
Will Dean
Point Blank (Oneworld), 7 October 2021
Available as: HB, 352pp, e
Source e: Advance copy provider by the publisher
ISBN(HB): 9781786079817

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of Bad Apples.

Tuva Moodyson is back! And not before time. I'd been missing the adventures of Sweden's foremost local reporter, adept as she is at getting caught up in murder while she attempts to describe the daily goings on in the town of Gavrik (aka - to her - Toytown).

At the end of Black River, Tuva was, you will recall, set for new challenges when her paper, the Gavrik Posten, absorbed its rival in neighbouring  Visberg - a place which we soon learn makes Gavrik look like a bustling metropolis. A hilltop town, only approachable via one severely graded road, Visberg has its own traditions and its own (numerous) aristocracy in the wealthy Edlung family who run the place along with so-called "Sheriff" Hansson. And it's not about welcome an outsider like Tuva to investigate its doings.

So it's not, perhaps, the best start when Tuva stumbles across a mutilated corpse on her way to introduce herself to the place...

In Bad Apples, Will Dean repeats the success of his earlier Tuva books, creating an atmosphere of Gothic horror and plain weirdness alongside a modern police investigation. Again, the forests loom large, enclosing Tuva and the other characters. Don't those forests represent the wide open spaces of nature, though? Well, they might - if they weren't full of hunters slaughtering the equally numerous elk - creatures you really don't want to cross. Fusillades of gunfire, men (and women) armed to the teeth, references to weapons - rifles, knives, axes - pepper the book, as though hinting at all the opportunities for a quick (or slow and painful) death. 

And as if that wasn't enough, Hallowe'en is getting close. Dean explains how, despite the reservations of older members of the community, this American custom has become a Big Thing in Sweden. But first we have to get through the unique Pan Night, Visberg's own special festival, when rotting apples lie on the town streets and all kinds of mischief is indulged. Tuva's there, of course, trying to solve a crime, and stop a criminal who is not above sending her coded warnings. (Also, of course, indulging her sense of curiosity). 

I just can't convey how creepy this book gets - it's perhaps something to do with the contrast between Tuva's life in Gavrik (of all places) and the state of things in Visberg. At home, as she's now beginning to think of it, she's back on the rails, off the booze, happy with her friends, her job (she has a promotion) and especially her  girlfriend Noora.  But at the other end of the Visberg road is a dark, closed community with its own secrets. 

We see Tuva shuttle back and forth. Readers of the previous books will recall that she won't take crap from anyone, but also that she's still grieving for her mother, still feels she let her down and will always see echoes of that in what goes on around her. All this weirdness isn't, one might think, good for her. I do, bizarrely, feel a bit protective towards this fictional person, who - you won't be surprised to learn - goes through quite a lot in this story. I might even go so far as to say that Will Dean is a MONSTER and shouldn't be put in charge of a vulnerable character like this...

Tuva Moodyson has, I would say, for me, joined that group of crime protagonists who are more important to the reader than the mystery they're apparently trying to solve. The details of that do unspool but I was worrying so much about Tuva, I didn't try to hard to read the clues (though they are there). Accordingly I wasn't prepared for the white knuckle conclusion to this book. 

I. Wasn't. Prepared. At. All. I say again, Will Dean is a MONSTER. 

In short, another book from Dean that is as much (more) an empathetic character study as a crime novel, but which still has plenty of thrills and excitement and some real shocks, setting up a perfect opening to what I profoundly hope will be a prompt Book 5 (and what I know will contain its own share of fear and regret...)

Finally - fans of Tuva's books will be delighted to know that the creepy wood carver sisters are back, and their trolls are more grotesque than ever...

For more information about Bad Apples, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - Black River by Will Dean

Black River (Tuva Moodyson, 3)
Will Dean
Point Blank, 12 March 2020
HB, 384pp

I'm grateful to Point Blank for a free advance copy of Black River to consider for review (a SIGNED copy no less, lucky me!)

Tuva Moodyson is back! - metaphorically, in this her third adventure, and literally, in that she's returned in a hurry to Gavrik, the place she disparagingly calls "Toytown", the little town in the northern forest of Sweden.

When last seen, Moodyson was heading South for a new job and a new life, leaving behind both her friends - her old boss Lena, her best friend Tammy - and enemies (too many to list).

Now, four months off the booze, she's back to settle debts. Tammy has gone missing, suspected to have been kidnapped (but nobody in Gavrik seems to care - after all, Tammy's an outsider, not even of Swedish ancestry) and Tuva's going to find her.

In this third adventure, Tuva's sharper, even more determined, even more detached. In the previous books there was a sense that, however strained her relations with the townsfolk, she was part of things with a stake - a tenuous, small stake, but a stake - in being accepted there. Part of the drama, part of the fear, of Dark Pines and Red Snow was seeing her stretch that, risk being shut out, lose her place, her role.

Well, in Black River, Tuva officially doesn't;'t give a fuck. She'll go anywhere, rile anyone, poke and pry and upset and offend and she WILL FIND HER FRIEND. It's heartbreaking to see the indifference many of the townspeople show towards Tammy: yes, they'll buy her Thai food from the van, food she serves late into the Arctic nights we saw in the previous books, but they won't actually lift a finger to help find her. Like other young women who have, it seems, gone missing from Gavrik, she probably brought it on herself.

Again, Tuva's left, with little help (Lena is the exception) to sift for info, ask the awkward questions, face danger when she encounters some deeply weird locals. Sally 'The Breeder' for example is chillingly strange - Dean skilfully conveys something just a bit... off... in her manner which gave me the creeps even apart from her sideline in breeding - and killing - snakes. But she isn't the only one.

And then another girl goes missing.

All this takes place against a background of Midsommar, the endless days, the heat, the clouds of bugs fro the forests - as inhospitable a season in its way as the midwinter cold of the previous books and one that Tuva hates with the passion of a lifelong sufferer. And yes, I have seen that film - and I think Dean cheekily deploys references too, such as the kulning or the flower bedecked poles that are the centrepiece of the festivities. Although that's not quite where we are in terms of genre, this adds a rich layer of meanings on top of the townsfolk's insularity ('They're Swedish!' Tuva is repeatedly told of some food, whether delicacy or everyday staple, to encourage her to try it - a subtle rebuke to her friendship for Tammy who after all is known for selling not-Swedish food) and also on top of Tuva's regret for her busted up family life (which we learn more about) and what she sees as her earlier desertion of Tammy.

It all makes for an almost unbearably heavy emotional brew which robs Tuva of sleep, distracts her from the task at hand and shows her threats and enemies everywhere (but remember, she's faced death twice in the previous books). My heart was in my mouth as I read the closing section of this book - Tuva Moodyson is a protagonist one really comes to care for, to identify with and I wan ted her to come through this sticky, intense time without more scars, more wounds - physical or emotional.

If you've read Dark Pines and Red Snow you will sort of know what to expect but here Dean cranks everything up several notches, this book is more intense, more suspenseful and - under that Midsommar sun - it manages to actually be darker than them.

Just perfect, incredibly good.

For more about this book, see the publisher's website here.

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.

Blogtour Review - Dark Pines by Will Dean

Cover design by Kid-Ethic

Dark Pines
Will Dean
Point Blank, 4 January 2018
PB, 328pp

Happy New Year!

Today I'm joining the blogtour for Dark Pines by Will Dean. I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of this book and for inviting me to take part.

I'm in the bullseye of a fucking murder forest and there are no lights on anywhere.

Dark Pines is a tensely compulsive thriller set in the gloom of a Swedish forest as the autumn shadows gather.

Tuva Moodyson returned from her life as a rising journalist in London - and from the weekends lost to drink - to be near her mother, who's terminally ill. Even though Moodyson hates the wilds and the forests and just wants bright lights, shops, restaurants and roads. But in the place she sneeringly calls Toytown, everyone's a hunter and the dark woods can't be ignored.

When, however, hunters begin to turn up dead in the woods, eyes gouged out, this also means everyone's a target. Suppressing her distrust of the outdoors and grabbing the chance to make her name through a career-defining story, Moodyson throws herself into the case, riling both natives (why can't she just write nice things about their town?) and the police. She also, however, begins to get close to the suspects in the remote hamlet where the bodies keep turning up.

A reclusive ghost writer.

Two sisters who make a living carving grotesque troll dolls for collectors - which they furnish with their own hair.

A taxi driver who seems to take a reciprocal interest in her.

Hannes and Frida who have, we are told "a good economy" (a phrase that recurs thought this book) and are well connected in the town. But Hannes is leader of the local hunters. Might he know more than he lets on about what is happening?

I was impressed by how Dean built tension, particularly through Moodyson's repeated excursions, alone, into Mossen village and its surrounding woods. The woods themselves seem like nothing more than a playground, an arena, for the strutting menfolk of the district who just seem obsessed with shooting things (and their right to do so). As the town slides into ruin about them - we are told of plenty of closed shops and failed businesses - they can only complain about a hunting ban imposed due to the murders. So it takes some considerable courage for a lone woman - especially one already resented and who actively fears the wilds - to go into those woods in pursuit of a story.

Moodyson is though a resourceful protagonist, who won't take "no" for an answer. Dean hints at some darkness in the past - not only her mother's illness and her father's death, but something in those London days suggests a shadow on her life. In addition, she has hearing loss and depends on hearing aids. Dean integrates the details of maintaining these - battery replacements, keeping them dry, problems with feedback and picking up background noise - into his story, showing her resentment at being patronised or at the ignorance of some. He also shows how helpful the aids are to Tuva, as when she wants to get her head down and do some work.

It's skilfully put together, not least in the way that the speech is made just "different" enough for the English to appear slightly foreign - as it might if it had been translated - without that obscuring the story. Dean also uses food to suggest contrasts between his characters: Tuva's hastily snatched McDonalds from the drive-through, her Thai friend Tammy's delicious street food served from her van, and the delicious sounding, but perhaps overreach, traditional Swedish food served up to Tuva in some of the homes she visits.

I felt there were a couple of loose ends - some threatening incidents that are explained but not fully - but this is an elegant and tautly written story, with a great sense of place, a likeable protagonist and a thrilling climax. I hope we hear a lot more of Tuva Moodyson in future.

For more info on the book see the publisher's page here.

You can buy Dark Pines from your local independent bookshop, including via Hive, or here, or here.