Taut thriller in the Tuva Moodyson thriller series by Will Dean. A woman is missing and then found murdered in the woods and Tuva must infiltrate a secluded farm community who don't welcome outsiders. Tight plotting and tension building from Dean who manages to create an oppressive sense across the wilds of Sweden. This is building into an impressive series alongside his standalone works.

I really love Tuva, the journalist who is focus of the stories in this series . Here she's brought along as witness to a cultist group living in isolation near their small village .. a woman who worked there is missing, and there's still the mystery of years about what happened to the owner of the community of houses/ people. A worthy addition to the series .. and her deafness is played in well .. not overdone but present as a feature of her lifestyle. Excellent addition to the series ...

I enjoyed the latest book in the Tuva Moodyson series, but felt it was lacking a little. As ever there was suspense and a great mystery at its heart and found Tuva's distress quite heart breaking at times. But, there was something lacking in this book, and I am not quite sure what it was as I am a huge fan of the series normally.

I have enjoyed Will Dean books before but this is the first I've read of the Tuva Moodyson series. The investigation of a murder from the perspective of a deaf journalist in Sweden presents a fresh twist in a traditional whodunnit and earns full marks. Tuva is a resourceful girl who is struggling with more than a few issues at the moment as her girlfriend, Noora, is in kind of a coma following a shooting in the previous book. Though I haven't read the preceding novels, it's not a hindrance in moving forward with Tuva's story. There's enough of a rehash to inform anyone new to the series on the key events from the past.

In Wolf Pack Tuva investigates the murder of a girl who worked at Rose Farm, a local farm/nail salon/cafe/survivalist commune. Rose Farm welcomes the public to their various business ventures but keeps everything else exceedingly private and off limits. Tuva makes quick work infiltrating their defences and getting to know those who live and work on the farm. It's easy to form an attachment to Tuva in her truck navigating life in small town Sweden. There's something non-fussy about the casual simplicity of her life and work. It feels as if I've 'known' Tuva for ages. It's so easy to slip into this novel and just enjoy being in Sweden, feeling the chilly cold and looking for answers with our intrepid journalist. Gentle tension makes this a good read worth investing time in.

Thanks to Oneworld and NetGalley for ARC.
Journalist Tuva Moodyson is back at work, newly promoted, and dealing with the fallout of a previous investigation which had life-changing consequences. When a young woman goes missing from a remote farm that is rumoured to host a survivalist community, Tuva tries to get access to that closed community and unravel the mystery.
From the heart-stopping opening chapter to the end, this is Dean at his best - exposing the weirdness and danger at the heart of small communities, while keeping readers engaged with twisty plotting and empathy for the cast of characters.
For those who don't know Dean's work, find the first Tuva outing (Dark Pines) and start there. You will have five in the series to embrace!

I'm a great fan of Will's writing and having read all the previous books in the Tuva's series I was really looking forward to know what happened after Bad Apples. Once again I was not disappointed, the story is thrilling, the characters well composed and you get the feeling you are next to Tuva, going through all the aspects of the investigation with her. Great read, I couldn't recommend more (and all the previous books in the series too!).
Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for the opportunity to read this ARC.

Oh how I love Tuva Moodyson! This series is just getting better and better.

Tuva has had her fair share of tragedy and is still reeling from the incident that almost killed her lover and put her in a coma. She now feels like she has little to lose, which is perhaps the reason she throws herself headlong into trying to solve another mystery, consequences be damned. A young woman has gone missing up near the mysterious Rose Farm, and no one is talking. It’s the sort of challenge Tuva cannot resist, even if it puts herself in danger.

With Tuva, Dean has created a strong, enigmatic, kick-ass female character who has not only overcome adversity (Tuva is deaf), but also never shies away from setting injustices right. Supported by a cast of weird and wonderful characters, and a remote, small-town setting, this series never disappoints. Over the previous four books, we have become very familiar with the small forest town of Gavrik and its inhabitants, and they all make a disappearance here. Whether it’s the creepy wood-turning sisters you’ve been hoping to catch up with, or the whiff of Tammy’s amazing cooking, Dean makes sure they are not forgotten.

I felt sad for Tuva in this one, because part of her bravery and determination not to back down reflects her inner loneliness after the tragedy that stole the love of her life from her. So perhaps this is the reason this book seemed more melancholy to me than its predecessors, even though it’s a solid mystery with lots of action and nail-biting scenes where Tuva puts herself in danger. For me, it’s the characters and the setting that make this series so irresistible, though of course I’m not knocking the well-plotted mystery that holds it all together (which I won’t go into here because it’s best to delve in blind for maximum surprise value).

The Tuva Moodyson series remains one of my favourite crime series and one I can’t get enough of. I hope that we will see a lot more of Tuva in future.

In the fifth book in this series Tuva Moodyson investigates the disappearance of a young woman connected to Rose Farm, a survivalist compound that is home to a cast of peculiar characters.

If you have read the first four books in the series you know what to expect: a plucky protagonist, a cracking mystery, and a hell of a lot of creepiness. If not, pick up ‘Dark Pines’. You won’t regret it.

Thank you NetGalley and One World Publications for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Tuva series just gets better. I don’t know how Will Dean does it but every episode is fresh, intermittently terrifying and compelling. I tried to read slowly just to make it last longer but I couldn’t!

I enjoyed this a lot. I hadn’t read any Will Dean stories before but would definitely look out for him. Tuva is a great character and the story was well paced. Recommended.

Reporter Tuva Moodyson is driving home when she sees a wounded dog by the roadside. The owner arrives & Tuva takes them to the vet. On the way the man mentions that a young relative has disappeared. Tuva discovers that Elsa was last seen at Rose Farm- a very secretive self contained
gated community that only opens at the weekends for the café & beauty spa. Elsa's disappearance gives Tuva something else to think of as her lover Noora lies comatose after being shot. Before long she finds that Rose Farm is hiding lots of secrets.

This is the fifth in this excellent series. I have been following it from the beginning & I really feel I know this area that Will Dean describes so well. I love the variety of character & the plot always keeps the reader guessing. I'm already looking forward to the next one. Thanks to Netgalley & the publisher for letting me read & review this book

Another great thriller with Tuva Moodyson! This book begins just after ‘bad apple’ and the aftermath (of what happened in Bad apple) is still affecting and Tuva and the community.
In this book she is investigating the disappearance of a young girl who was working on an isolated farm with a group of odd people.
This book was a slow burner for me but once I got into it, I read it super quick!
It’s disturbing, creepy, tense, chilling and twisty! A well rounded dark plot that I’d def recommend!

What to say about Wolf Pack? I need to be careful, but first I will get one think off my chest: TUVA MOODYSON IS BACK! YES!

That done - why do I need to be careful?

Well, long term readers of these books will know that the previous one, Bad Apples, ended on a real cliffhanger. I won't say what that was because those who haven't read the books shouldn't have that spoiled. Nor will I share the outcome. I will though be having a word with you afterwards about why you haven't read Dark Pines, Red Snow, Black River and Bad Apples yet?

I can sum up the reason you should in three words. Tuva. Tuva. Tuva. For newcomers, Tuva is a borderline alcoholic young woman with family problems. Not fitting in is her thing - she is Deaf and a lesbian in a resolutely conservative, hardscrabble town out in the forest wilds, a place she has previously called Toytown and here, Shitsville. Daily life brings her up against the town mentality, and as a reporter on the local paper, she's already a figure of suspicion, but her outsider-dom does give her a distinct - not judgemental - perspective on events.

Fortunately, Tuva isn't completely without friends and support when things turn upside down. In many ways, she in on a more even keel here than we have seen before. But still, you get the sense that she's hanging on by a fingernail. How much more must she take?

A lot, as it turns out. In these books Dean has delighted in showing us the stranger inhabitants of the forest. The weird sisters who make model trolls with human hair and fingernails. The entire neighbouring town of Visberg, with its sulphurous apple festival and licensed bad behaviour. The hunters who, one suspects, are more than ready to settle scores out in the woods. And a variety of killers.

In Wolf Pack, we're introduced to a colony of survivalists who live on their own compound behind barbed wire and deep ditches. Now, a young woman has gone missing from their site and there are concerns for her welfare. Can the residents of Rose Farm, where she worked, cast any light on events? Unable to crack the place, the police approach Tuva to see if she can gain access. This brings her into contact with a paranoid and closed community, intensely suspicious of the outside world - and armed to the teeth. To gain their trust, she takes part in a gruelling initiation - but will it be enough?

Wolf Pack is a wonderful addition to the Tuva series. We see the redoubtable reporter at a truly low ebb, but also determined to hold herself together and prevent - or avenge - the destruction of another young life. The rural Sweden that Dean portrays is a harsh place, with Nature tricksy and dangers abounding. Yes, that does - to a degree - push people to cooperate and help each other (as Tammy helps Tuva manage the amount she drinks) but even this can - as with the Rose Farm gang - itself become corrupted.

Tuva's obsession with finding young Elsa seems to know no limits. It's easy to see this as coming from a sense of guilt at what has happened, or a desire strike a blow against the silence, clannishness and localism of the forest people (especially those in Rose Farm) but she also, I think, has a genuine sense of justice. It is a thing that may lead her into danger - does lead her into danger - and that also may have compromised her for the future, leaving favours owed to dangerous people...

EXCERPT: I'm hot. The concrete all around is cold but I'm sweating and I'm growing tired. The caterpillar movements are difficult. I'm moving but it is slow work and I feel like there is a paving slab resting on my chest and one underneath me and a wall pushing each shoulder. I'm locked in a box that nobody has the key for.

I scoot along and the roof comes down lower so I have to turn my head to the side.

My breathing quickens.

Fuck this.

My hearing aid grates along the stone floor of this hellhole, and then it comes loose.

I scream.

I shouldn't. It makes things worse. My chest starts to convulse, I'm breathing too fast, my ribs hitting the ceiling and then retreating. Hitting and retreating.

Sweat in my eyes.

One hearing aid gone. The urge to stand is unbearable. I want to get up and walk. I want to spread my arms.

Blackness.

The smell of moss and wet earth.

And then the worst thing in the world.

My head hits a wall. The flat tunnel closes in and I realise there is no other end. This is a one way journey.

ABOUT 'WOLF PACK': 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?

MY THOUGHTS: Wolf Pack is tight and tense and exciting.

The remote Swedish countryside in which this series is set is almost as major a character as Tuva herself. Filled with dark, menacing forests, it adds to the claustrophobic atmosphere Will Dean has created. And if you think that Rose Farm is a spot of brightness in the landscape, you might need to think again. It has a dark past, and is now a closed community, home to a half dozen survivalists.

Tuva is a fascinating character. She is deaf, but has never let that hold her back. She is gritty, and determined, but has a soft side demonstrated by the love she shows her comatose partner Noora, and Dan, the small boy who lives in the apartment next to hers.

A number of characters from the previous books make an appearance in Wolf Pack. Nils and Lars, her newspaper colleagues; Tammy, her best friend; policeman Thord Petterson; and others. This gives a great sense of continuity.

What starts out as a missing person's case soon turns into something more sinister as a body is discovered. Suddenly the idyllic Rose Farm becomes a hotbed of resentment, and jealousy, as the disparity between the picture they present to the world and what actually happens there widens and is exposed.

⭐⭐⭐⭐.3

#WolfPack #NetGalley

I: @willrdean @oneworldpublications

T: @willrdean @OneworldNews

#contemporaryfiction #crime #murdermystery #thriller

THE AUTHOR: Will Dean grew up in the East Midlands, living in nine different villages before the age of eighteen. He was a bookish, daydreaming kid who found comfort in stories and nature (and he still does). After studying Law at the LSE, and working in London, he settled in rural Sweden. He built a wooden house in a boggy clearing at the centre of a vast elk forest, and it's from this base that he compulsively reads and writes.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Oneworld Publications, Point Blank, for providing a digital ARC of Wolf Pack by Will Dean for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

For an explanation of my rating system please refer to my Goodreads.com profile page or the about page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com

This review is also published on Twitter, Amazon, Instagram and my webpage

I say this every time but seriously Will Dean is my favourite author! His thrillers leave room for small comparison.

What gets me in his every book and of course we see it here too is how naturally the plot flows. As a reader, I feel that the story is actually happening right now.

His way of providing information about the surroundings, both word building and background details, is always by incorporating them in the plot so it’s not boring or just filling space.

His characters are always interesting. Have depth and layers and thoroughly thought. The mystery is held until the last minute and the tension is palpable.

I absolutely loved it!

I am a huge Will Dean fan and have loved every book in the Tuva series so far. I’ve gobbled them up in a day or two each, but this one took me 10 days to get through, and I think that speaks volumes. I enjoyed the brief check-in with Tuva’s life, but the main bulk of the story was a bit too far fetched and felt like maybe Dean had been binging Ozark. His atmospheric writing was as strong as ever, but story-wise, I felt a little let down. Still though, I’m looking forward to the next one!

Will Dean writes so atmospherically about the forests you can almost smell the trees. Given what's going on in the world at the moment, life with the Wolf Pack seemed almost enticing at times, although the murder rate might put me off. Another great Tuva novel.

"It's like a snow globe left in a dark room". This sums up the whole landscape and plots of Will Dean's amazing novel which follows the world of deaf journalist Tuva Moodyson.
We are back in Sweden in a small town over which the two chimneys of the Grimberg Liquorice Factory still stand as menacing towers of doom for the next dark mystery which Tuva will, as usual, throw herself into 100% often ignoring threat and fear. But this time we meet Tuva in grief. Her girlfriend, Noora Ali, a local policewoman, now lives in a silent comatose state at her parents home after a shooting in Tuva's flat. The scars are deep.
So when Tuva stumbles into a group of survivalists living in the unaptly named Rose Farm - there is nothing smelling sweet within the guarded compound which had 20 years ago been the scene of a WACO style cult suicide/murder.
Once again the landscape of Sweden seeps into the story. Although it is April and Easter celebrations are in the air for rebirth and flowers, death stalks the area when a young woman -with associations to Rose Farm- is found murdered. Rather than take a few photos and make a few notes Tuva throws herself into the community that is prepping for disaster. Within the compound are a crazy group, but I was still glad to see some of Dean's great town characters forming part of the plot including Luka at the pizza place and the weird troll making sisters. Beware too the still unresolved issue of dodgy dentists that once again keep me from the door of anything to do with the dentists drill!
It was hard to pinpoint the main suspect in such a group and Dean built the atmosphere with utter brilliance. We are with Tuva on her every move and some of those became scarily life threatening. The images of dogs and wolf packs were very well immersed into the human lives that were taking dangerous turns to 'save' themselves.
There was a huge heart to Tuva that had been injured in the last novel and it is great to see that despite the darkness overwhelming this plot she surfaced from oblivion to hope. Long may she last in further books giving us more tales from these 'Wild Woods'.

I recall being incandescently outraged with the cliffhanger the last book was left at. So much so that, yeah, as predicted I started this book having no recollection of it. So yeah, I'm over that- mostly... although I am still a tad unhappy at that particular series arc, spoilers prevent me from expanding too much on that comment...
So... in this, her 5th outing, intrepid reported Tuva Moodyson is intrigued when she hears of a missing person. One who disappeared from a compound, a closed community. One that is completely cut off from the outside world, apart from opening certain hospitality and services. Word on the street is that they are survivalists. But they have piqued Tuva's interest, both to do with the missing girl, but also just as an entity to be investigated. Especially when she hears the stories of what happened there in the past when there was a family massacre...
But they don't like outsiders, especially nosy ones, especially nosy journalists. Has Tuva bitten off more than she can chew, and is she in danger...?
I am not quite sure whether it's because of the themes of cults and survivalists but I didn't find this mystery as interesting and intriguing as the previous four books. Maybe it was residual annoyance over the ongoing situation with Noora. Tuva's behaviour has always been a bit on the wild side but she seems a bit more reckless herein and that didn't quite sit right with me. I hope that there is a point to what has happened, that there is a bigger picture that I am not yet seeing. But at the moment I feel Tuva has lost her way and in doing that, the series feels a little lost too. It all feels a little too much about Tuva and not enough mystery... Which I guess is OK for one book but I do hope normal(ish) service will resume soon.
My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

Tuva Moodyson series is a brilliant and intriguing series. This books starts just after Bad Apple and the aftermath of what happened are affecting Tuva and the characters.
It's a dark and creepy story with some truly heartbreaking moments. You cannot help feeling for Tuva and her desperation but I also loved her resilience and will to fight.
The fast paced and gripping plot kept turning pages and i read it in one sitting as I couldn't stop reading.
A well plotted, twisty, and dark stories.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine