Red Snow (Tuva Moodyson Mystery, #2) in Around the World

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Oct 23, 2020 Andrea rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-foreign-locale, series, city-library, audio, around-the-world-2020, ssop

3.5★ Another accomplished mystery from Will Dean, but a little slower-paced which made it slightly less compelling for me, thus I'm rating it down a bit compared to Dark Pines.

Six months or so on from the Medusa Murders and the town of Gavrik in central Sweden is suffering through the white months, particularly bitter this year. After her great success in reporting the town's recent grisly tragedy, Tuva is in her final 2 weeks at the Gavrik Posten before moving south to begin working for a quali 3.5★ Another accomplished mystery from Will Dean, but a little slower-paced which made it slightly less compelling for me, thus I'm rating it down a bit compared to Dark Pines.

Six months or so on from the Medusa Murders and the town of Gavrik in central Sweden is suffering through the white months, particularly bitter this year. After her great success in reporting the town's recent grisly tragedy, Tuva is in her final 2 weeks at the Gavrik Posten before moving south to begin working for a quality bi-weekly journal just near Malmö. When the owner of the local liquorice factory, one of the two main employers in Gavrik, falls to his death in an apparent suicide, Tuva knows she won't be having the quiet, uneventful fortnight she might have expected.

In order to facilitate her signature human-interest angle in the reporting of the death, Tuva needs to get closer to the surviving Grimberg family members, and the opportunity to do just that comes along in the shape of David Holmqvist, the region's infamous ghost-writer. He is working on his first ever named-author book, which happens to be a history of Grimberg Liquorice, but the Grimberg women have become uncooperative since the suicide. Tuva offers to take on a research role for him, providing the family/personal colour to what might otherwise become a dull history book. Holmqvist agrees, and Tuva has her way in. She will do the work in conjunction with her reporting job, and also work in her spare time if she needs to.

Then, on her very first official visit to the factory in her role as researcher, an employee is found dead in a disused part of the complex; murdered, with liquorice coins covering his eyes, more stuffed down his throat, and a dog's tooth inserted into a small, deep incision. With the town already on edge, the murder sends the town of Gavrik into a tense tailspin, and Tuva must work quickly to get the full story before she is due to leave.

Although I've already said this book is a bit slower, it still has lots to recommend it. Tuva's character has a lot of growth, not only from the things that happened to her in between the two stories, but also from the potential for romance with the new cop in town, and from the way her friends and colleagues embrace her as she prepares to move away from Gavrik. Then there's the location. The author actually lives in the middle of an elk forest (much like Utgard Forest, I imagine!), so he's well-qualified to observe and use the idiosyncrasies of his real Värmland location to build a fictional setting that is 100% authentic. While Dark Pines gave the reader a summer version of Gavrik, with everyone being eaten alive by the insects, in Red Snow we are in the depths of winter, when everything is white, people don't bother to shower very often and their skin peels away from the cold. It is incredibly atmospheric. Finally, can I just say, liquorice factory.

Once again I chose audio for this series. Maya Lindh's narration is familiar and charming with her slightly accented English that gives her away as a non-native speaker only when you hear the occasional example of unusual pronunciation. Her voice is synonymous with Tuva for me now, so I imagine that if I were to read a text copy of #3, it would still be her voice in my head. (But I won't - audio all the way for this series!)

With a number of returning characters and frequent references to the events surrounding the Medusa Murders of Dark Pines, I wouldn't recommend trying to read this as a standalone, or reading out of order. But do read it!

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Jun 01, 2022 Andrew rated it liked it

The second in this series finds deaf reporter Tuva eagerly looking forward to leaving the small town where she learnt her trade and lived through the last books events to move to a new job in the big city. when she is asked to help research a book on the owners of the local liquorice factory she soon finds all is not what it seems. A very enjoyable page turner and a character Im looking forward to revisiting.

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