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

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I guessed the identity of the killer, because I kind of sensed the way Dean wrote about them, building them was a bit more meticulous than the other characters, but overall I really enjoyed this story. Tuva becomes totally involved in the case in the hope that a big story will help her return to top flight journalism, when the time comes. The plot and mystery is okay, not fantastic and again nothing compared to the wonderfully creepy eyeless corpses of the first book. Dark Pines, the first novel in the series, is being adapted by screenwriter and award-winning playwright Charlotte Jones (The Halcyon, Without You) into a six-part returning crime thriller series with “an iconic heroine at its heart: the thrillingly modern, utterly original, deaf journalist Tuva Moodyson.” No pattern of clues or slow revealing of mystery. This is how most crime authors would meet a word count. There'd be clues that uncovered more mystery but also more clues. There'd be things we're all trying to work out. There'd be questions which seemed like they were answered but then turned out not to be. But oh no, there's no time for that here because we have descriptions of Thai food filling our protgraginist's belly as well as descriptions of some of the racist customers who frequent the Thai food place, because you know... everyone in Sweden is racist.

This was a chilling, atmospheric story set in a village and dense forests of rural Sweden. It is gripping and creepy, and there is a sinister feeling connected with its small-town inhabitants. A menacing mood is prevalent and the tension never lets up. The compassionate and relentless Tuva becomes obsessed and dedicated to solving the crimes. This leads her to enter the dreaded forest on her own, desiring to overcome her greatest fear. She finds the forest even more terrifying and dangerous than she anticipated in her wildest imagination. I enjoyed this, I enjoyed this quite a bit, and the ending caught me off guard, which is always good in a book like this. In 1987 the Farm became notorious due to a horrible murder/suicide by the previous owner. He shot his wife and two children and killed himself. Only a tiny baby survived. Elsa's body has been found, and Tuva is tenacious in helping the police find her murderer and bring the killer to justice. She starts by asking people in the community what they know about the inhabitants of Rose Farm. The townspeople do not know or are not forthcoming. Those who will talk spread rumours or give muddled information that is less than helpful. One older woman suggests all men are pediatricians. Tuva interprets this as the woman believes they are pedophiles.I love a story that transports me to an unfamiliar place. The author brilliantly evokes the land, painting vivid word pictures of its dark vast forests of spruce, pine and birch, its damp bogs and marshes, the mud underfoot, the rain, sleet, and patches of snow. I felt immersed in its moist, claustrophobic atmosphere. It is probably a place I won’t want to visit anytime soon. One of his deaf friends reads the Tuva books before they are published, while a Vietnamese friend read The Last Thing to Burn in its early stages. 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. 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. The twist here being that the author – Will Dean – is not a Scandinavian but an Englishman living in Scandinavia, in fact in a wooden house he has built in a vast elk forest.

I just love that Will Dean can write a thriller, a PROPER whodunnit, a pacey & gory mystery...... that folds into its mix: pear flavoured wine gums, bouts of hayfever in MacDonalds, the rigmorale of changing out of layers of clothing & how a Hillux handles. Will Dean puts the REAL in surreal. The idea is horrific. Lenn is kind of eroding her identity, layer by layer, by burning her possessions,” says Dean. “I’m not a very intellectual writer, I really feel my way through stories. So I was uncomfortable for her and worried for her all the way through. And the hope that she saw all the way through the book got smaller and smaller.”

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. Tuva is trying to write a report on a missing person, and as part of this report she needs to interview a group of survivalists who are doing all they can to live off grid and prepare for the bad times ahead. In trying to investigate Tuva needs to ingratiate herself into the group, and try and get them to open up to her. The more she does this, the more that is revealed about the group until we reach an epic conclusion. This is sort of more of problem 6, but our character is dislikeable in still another way. She's a preacher. Apparently it's not nice to compliment a deaf person on their speaking skills. Even if it's meant to be a compliment, "it's just f***ing not" she says (actual quote) and shame on you, reader, for thinking anything else. You are the bad guy here. You because you're not deaf, you're not bisexual, your best friend isn't Thai, you're not half Sami and you may not be female. 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.” I really like this series, like the quirkiness of it and the tension which flows through every book. It is not a fast paced series, nor should it be as that would not fit the setting. It is atmospheric, the author using the landscape and, in this case, the seasons to full effect. The book is set towards the end of the really cold season, but there is still that sense of the darkness that envelops everything, setting a kind a of moody and eerie tone that when coupled with a community of people who can hunt and shoot with a stealth that cannot be matched, it really sets you on edge, not sure what to expect or when. There are certainly a lot of surprises in the book, as well as some elements which seem almost inevitable, and be prepared to be caught unaware when the truth of what happens is revealed as, in true Will Dean style, he takes us right to the edge with a high stakes, jeopardy laden ending that really gets the pulse pumping.

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. It seems the murders have started again with the discovery of the mutilated body of a hunter in the forest. Another character…well two…who captured my interest were those creepy sisters and their trolls….WTAF!? I rarely get freaked out…but WOW – totally got under my skin ….even now I am getting shivers just thinking about them!Swedish reporter Tuva Moodyson, who wears hearing aids, takes to the hills where the isolated and inbred town of Visberg can be found at the end of a long and winding road.’ This story is based in Sweden in a small rural town, out in the deep, dark woods – like, really deep and really dark. It’s the type of place where the best coffee is at McDonalds, and everyone knows everyone else. Our main character is Tuva, she is an outsider and most of the locals treat her as such. Tuva is a journalist for the local paper and she is tasked with covering a recent murder. A murder where the victim is shot in the woods and his eyes are removed. Nice hey? Tuva is a very likable protagonist, she’s bright, and inquisitive and determined to do a thorough job, no matter how much the locals may be offended by her inquisitiveness and reporting. Tuva Moodyson is a deaf journalist working for the Gavrik Posten. She is reeling from her partner’s shooting and its repercussions: Noora Ali, her beloved, is now in a coma like state with no chances of getting better.

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”. I shouldn't. It makes things worse. My chest starts to convulse, I'm breathing too fast, my ribs hitting the ceiling and then retreating. Hitting and retreating. Elk hunt is a big thing in this town called Gavrik, men usually hunt. Nature and wilderness makes Tuva uncomfortable and she doesn't enjoy it, but when an hunter is found dead in the forest, his eyes taken out, Tuva would have to investigate because this is her chance to write a good story to progress her career.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). 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.” 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 I loved every moment of this one. Every word. It was just blinking brilliant. This is DEFINITELY one to watch in 2018 and has pretty much guaranteed itself a place in my top ten reads for this year – Dark Pines is a novel to watch and Will Dean is an author to watch. I sense great things ahead.