What’s it all about?:
Red Snow is the eagerly awaited follow-up to Dark Pines, selected for ITV’s Zoe Ball Book Club
TWO BODIES
One suicide. One cold-blooded murder. Are they connected? And who’s really pulling the strings in the small Swedish town of Gavrik?
TWO COINS
Black Grimberg liquorice coins cover the murdered man’s eyes. The hashtag #Ferryman starts to trend as local people stock up on ammunition.
TWO WEEKS
Tuva Moodyson, deaf reporter at the local paper, has a fortnight to investigate the deaths before she starts her new job in the south. A blizzard moves in. Residents, already terrified, feel increasingly cut-off. Tuva must go deep inside the Grimberg factory to stop the killer before she leaves town for good. But who’s to say the Ferryman will let her go?
What did I think?:
Hello everyone and welcome to my stop on the blog tour today for the second book in Will Dean’s fabulous Scandinavian crime series featuring Tuva Moodyson who has now been officially confirmed as one of my new favorite characters in fiction. I was incredibly silly and delayed reading the first in the series, Dark Pines until recently but now I’ve read both, I’m delighted to count myself as an eager fan. Thank you so much to Anne Cater for inviting me to be part of this blog tour and to Point Blank, One World Publications for sending me a complimentary copy of the novel in exchange for an honest review.
As I mentioned yesterday in my Dark Pines review, there are some series where you feel the benefit from reading them in order and I’m so glad I took the opportunity to do this with the Moodyson Mysteries. Don’t get me wrong, this book can absolutely be read as a stand-alone, no big secrets from the first novel are given away but I definitely felt the advantage of having read Dark Pines first. You get to understand not only our female protagonist much more intimately but in addition, the town and the other inhabitants so in my opinion, this proved to be fantastic preparation for entering the town of Gavrik once more in Red Snow.
Will Dean, author of Red Snow, the second novel in the Tuva Moodyson Mysteries.
Plucky journalist Tuva Moodyson is just about to leave town for a brand new job in journalism in a different town when she becomes embroiled in another story. As the synopsis suggests, it encompasses a suicide, a murder, family secrets and drama that surround the Grimberg dynasty, owners of the large liquorice factory in the town. Once more, Will Dean has used the minutiae of everyday life in a small town in Sweden, the bitter, unforgiving weather and a fascinating mystery to produce a compelling narrative which had me hooked from the very first pages. As I’ve alluded to, I was already pretty enamoured with our female lead so to be perfectly honest, I think I would have enjoyed this novel no matter how fast or slow the pacing of the story was but it was terrific to be presented with a story where the timing of events was as close to perfection as I think it’s possible to be!
There are slower, almost gentile moments where the reader gets to crack the hard, outer shell of Tuva’s character and discover she is a lot more vulnerable than she makes herself out to be. I’m always a huge fan of character development in novels and with Red Snow, it ticks all the necessary boxes in this respect. From what we know already about Tuva, she is a fighter. She doesn’t let the fact she is deaf become an obstacle in her life, she has dealt with hardship, heart-break and grief and come out stronger on the other side and in this novel, we get to see her open up and begin to let people in. Then there is the other side of her personality – the ruthless, determined search for the truth even if she puts herself at risk in the process. I just love her.
Salta katten (salty cat) cat-shaped salty liquorice pastilles. Apparently Scandinavians have loved these sweets since they first came out in 1952! The publishers were kind enough to send me a packet with the book so thank you very much once again to them.
As with all other thrillers I review here, you might know I don’t like to go into too much depth about the actual story but I can tell you a few things. It’s complex and intricate, involving a range of individuals from the Grimberg family themselves to the people who work with them and as Tuva edges closer and closer towards unravelling both the suicide and the murder, it becomes so gripping, I found it impossible to put down until I had discovered what exactly had happened. I was slightly concerned that I might have figured out the villain of the piece after I worked out the ending of Dark Pines but this time, I was over the moon to realize that this time, I was wrong!
I do hope that even though Tuva Moodyson is leaving Gavrik behind, the author will continue to write books in the series. I feel like as a character, Tuva has hidden depths and dark secrets that we haven’t even realised yet and I’d be overjoyed to see her involved in another case, doing what she does best. Will Dean has set a whole new bar for Scandinavian crime fiction that values equality, diversity and celebrating the differences between various communities/individuals and I thoroughly enjoy everything his writing stands for. In the words of Oliver Twist: “Please Sir, can I have some more?!”
Would I recommend it?:
But of course!
Star rating (out of 5):
AUTHOR INFORMATION
WILL DEAN grew up in the East Midlands, living in nine different villages before
the age of eighteen. After studying at the LSE and working in London, he
settled in rural Sweden with his wife. He built a wooden house in a boggy
forest clearing at the center of a vast elk forest, and it’s from this base that he
compulsively reads and writes.
Find Will on Goodreads at: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4448825.Will_Dean
or on Twitter at: @willrdean
Thank you so much once again to Anne Cater and Point Blank, Oneworld Publications for inviting me to take part in this blog tour, I’ve had a wonderful time doing it. Red Snow was published on 10th January 2019 and will be available as a hardback and a digital e-book. If you fancy more information don’t forget to check out the rest of the stops on this blog tour for some amazing reviews!
Link to Red Snow on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40675503-red-snow
Link to Red Snow on Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Red-Snow-Tuva-Moodyson-Mystery/dp/1786074796/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1547295714&sr=8-1
