20 May 2021.
ISBN: 978-1-78607-841-4 (PB)
This
novel is the third featuring tough-minded reporter Tuva Moodyson. It’s Scandi noir at its best by an English author
settled in Sweden whose previous thrillers Dark
Pines and Red Snow introduced us
to the deaf, kickass protagonist. It can
be read as a stand-alone.
Set
in the remote, rural one-horse town of Gavrik surrounded by dense, gloomy, pine
forests, Tuva is drawn back from Malmo when her best pal, Tammy, who runs a
tasty Thai food take-away from a van, goes missing, presumed forcibly abducted,
during Midsommer, a traditional Swedish
festival, involving maypoles, outdoor games and much eating and drinking on the
shortest day of the year. Not long after
Tammy’s disappearance, a second woman, an aspiring celebrity, vanishes and this
ratchets up the tension.
Tammy,
a Swede of Thai heritage, is regarded as an outsider and her absence is only
taken seriously when the second woman from a well-to-do family with clout is
also unaccounted for. It becomes a race
against time to find the two, very different, women before they become grim
statistics.
The
reader meets a host of bizarre, if not truly creepy, residents, with strange occupations
and interests that clearly necessitated a depth of research by the author. Yet
the research is skillfully woven into the storyline, a feat in itself, and one
never feels burdened by the information.
Not
a particularly complex plot, although none the worse for that, the author is a
talented craftsman, a wordsmith who effectively creates an evocative and yes, also
chilling atmosphere where characters are suspicious of outsiders, where the
reader can feel, smell and witness the nasty seasonal insects and bugs and
where the identity of the perpetrator is completely unexpected. Tuva, too, is confronted by unimaginable
danger and one wonders if she will live to fight another day.
From
start to finish the pace is as fast as it is electric, the writing fresh and
descriptive, characters are fully formed, the dialogue crisp and the bonds
between women sensitively probed and explored. What’s
not to like? This book is a winner.
------
Reviewer: Serena
Fairfax
Will Dean
grew
up in the East Midlands, living in nine different villages before the age of
eighteen. After studying Law at LSE, and working many varied jobs in London, he
settled in rural Sweden with his wife. He built a wooden house in a boggy
forest clearing and it’s from this base that he compulsively reads and writes. Dark
Pines was his first novel.
Serena Fairfax spent her childhood in India,
qualified as a lawyer in England and practised in London for many years. She
began writing by contributing feature articles to legal periodicals then turned her hand to fiction. Having
published nine novels all, bar one, hardwired with a romantic theme, she has
also written short stories and accounts of her explorations off the beaten
track that feature on her blog. A tenth, distinctly unromantic, novel is a work
in progress. Thrillers, crime and mystery narratives, collecting old masks and
singing are a few of her favourite things.
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