by Will Dean
SYNOPSIS
When there’s a pack on the hunt, nobody’s safe
A closed community
Rose Farm is home to a group of survivalists, completely cut off from the outside world. Until now.
A missing person
A young woman goes missing within the perimeter of the farm compound. Can Tuva talk her way inside the tight-knit group to find her story?
A frantic search
As Tuva attempts to unmask the culprit, she gains unique access to the residents. But soon she finds herself in danger of the pack turning against her – will she make her way back to safety so she can expose the truth?
Will Dean’s most heart-pounding Tuva Moodyson thriller yet takes Tuva to her absolute limits in exposing a heinous crime, and in her own personal life. Can she, and will she, do the right thing?
REVIEW
It's no secret that I'm #TeamTuva, and after an excruciating wait (and one hell of a cliffhanger) I was thrilled to be able to read the follow up to Bad Apples - the latest Tuva Moodyson thriller, Wolf Pack.
After a tough year, Tuva is back reporting at the Gavrik Posten. When she hears the news that a young women, Elsa Nyberg has gone missing she begins looking into the history of Rose Farm where Elsa worked, an isolated farm compound with a dark and intriguing past. By aligning herself with the farm's residents, Tuva is able to provide a buffer between the group and the police department, but with no idea who to trust, Tuva could be placing herself right in the path of a murderer.
When I read Bad Apples last year I was so taken by the eccentric mix of characters and all of their dark and bizarre traditions. This time around, the atmosphere was very different. The characters are much harsher, they are survivalists and they live and work together as a pack. This strength and the secretive nature of what was going on at Rose Farm is what gave Wolf Pack an added layer of tension, and I genuinely feared for Tuva as she worked her way into the inner circle at the farm. Talking about tension... there was one scene near the end of the book that really got my heart-rate going. Don't read this section if you are claustrophobic, I almost couldn't bear to read on and ended up squinting my way through it so that I wouldn't experience the full extent of the horror!
What I loved the most about Wolf Pack was the way Tuva's mental state was reflected in her behaviour throughout the investigation. Having been through such a traumatic experience and losing somebody so close to her, she had also lost some of her will to carry on and couldn't see the value of her own life. She used the investigation into Elsa's disappearance as an excuse to why she was putting herself in danger. She didn't need to risk her own safety, but the fact that she did was a subconscious cry for help and this was so beautifully explored.
I am a huge fan of this series. Each book keeps getting better and better and as a slightly more unusual hybrid of Swedish setting and British author, I would highly recommend them to anyone looking for a gentler introduction to Scandinavian Crime Fiction.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
WILL DEAN lives in the middle of a vast elk forest in Sweden, where the Tuva Moodyson novels are set. He grew up in the East Midlands. After studying Law at the LSE, and working in London, he settled in rural Sweden and built a wooden house in a boggy clearing, where he lives with his wife and son, and it’s from this base that he reads and writes. Will Dean is the author of Dark Pines, Red Snow, Black River and Bad Apples in the Tuva Moodyson series. His debut novel in the series, Dark Pines, was selected for Zoe Ball’s Book Club and shortlisted for the Guardian Not the Booker prize. The second, Red Snow, won Best Independent Voice at the Amazon Publishing Readers' Awards and was longlisted for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2020, as was his third novel, Black River. The series is in development for television. Will is also the author of two stand-alone novels, The Last Thing to Burn, shortlisted for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2022, and First Born, both published by Hodder. Will Dean posts regularly about reading and writing on YouTube and you can find him on Twitter, TikTok and Instagram. @willrdean TikTok: will_dean_author YouTube: Will Dean – Forest Author
Thanks to Anne Cater @RandomTTours, Point Blank Crime @PointBlankCrime and Will Dean @willrdean for the opportunity to read and review.
Publisher: Point Blank Crime
Fiction: Crime Thriller / Police Procedural
ISBN: 978-0861541997
Pages: 320pp
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