Will I love Dark Pines?

I enjoy reading crime novels that feature other cultures or countries. Dark Pines (and the series that follows) whisked me off to deepest, darkest Sweden.

The main character, a local reporter called Tuva Moodyson, is a strong female lead. She’s young, feisty and tenacious. Her deafness makes her multidimensional, overcoming life’s challenges, without author Will Dean resorting to common tropes of crime fiction protagonists (e.g. cynical, alcoholic detective).

Dark Pines features a host of memorable and eccentric characters in a creepy and claustrophobic small town, giving this quirky book a Twin Peaks vibe. For me, the setting was a character… show more.

Welcome to wild and snowy Gavrik (aka “Toytown”), a rural village in Sweden where an unsolved murder may be linked to a modern-day crime. Deaf newspaper reporter Tuva Moodyson is afraid of the forest, yet she’s forced to follow a breadcrumb trail into the woods that leads her from one strange local to another – including a pair of sisters who craft troll dolls so unimaginably creepy they gave me nightmares. Dark Pines has a remarkable sense of place and drips with Nordic noir atmosphere.