Review: BLACK RIVER

BLACK RIVER by Will Dean (Point Blank Books, 2020)

Reviewed by Craig Sisterson

Black River is an electrifying return for relentless reporter Tuva Moodyson, from the author of Dark Pines and Red Snow.

FEAR: Tuva’s been living clean in southern Sweden for four months when she receives horrifying news. Her best friend Tammy Yamnim has gone missing.

SECRETS: Racing back to Gavrik at the height of Midsommar, Tuva fears for Tammy’s life. Who has taken her, and why? And who is sabotaging the small-town search efforts?

LIES: Surrounded by dark pine forest, the sinister residents of Snake River are suspicious of outsiders. Unfortunately, they also hold all the answers. On the shortest night of the year, Tuva must fight to save her friend. The only question is who will be there to save Tuva?

From the early pages of his first novel starring deaf Swedish journalist Tuva Moodyson, Will Dean showed an assured hand with a great touch for atmospheric, absorbing storytelling.

Known in Europe as ‘the Forest Author’ as he swapped London city life for a wooden cabin in a boggy Swedish forest, Dean’s tales are filled with a host of unusual and kooky characters befitting small-town Nordic rural life.

Tuva Moodyson is a fascinating heroine – relentless yet prone to stumbles. In Black River she has escaped small-town Gavrik for clean living and a lonely life among the bright lights of Malmo, only to be drawn back home when her best friend Tammy, proprietor of the local Thai cuisine food truck, vanishes. It’s the height of Midsommar, and as locals and visitors sweat under the heat and sun few seem too concerned about Tammy’s absence, at first, until another woman goes missing. Someone who looks far more ‘Swedish’ than Tammy. Searches head into the Utgard Forest. Determined to find her friend, Tuva begins to investigate the creepy residents of Snake River, but where does the real danger lie?

Dean has crafted another tense, atmospheric tale that in a way blends the intrigue and social commentary of crime fiction with the deliciously scary soul of folk tales: vast and menacing forests offering both danger and adventure; stories full of memorable characters, heroic and grotesque. Tuva is an intriguing heroine and Dean does a fine job bringing her deafness into the story in an authentic way rather than creating a caricature. Tuva’s deafness is an intrinsic part of her character, but not all she is.

A very good read in a very good series.

Craig Sisterson is a lawyer turned features writer from New Zealand, now living in London. In recent years he’s interviewed hundreds of crime writers and talked about the genre on national radio, top podcasts, and onstage at books festivals on three continents. He has been a judge of the Ned Kelly Awards and the McIlvanney Prize, and is founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards and co-founder of Rotorua Noir. You can heckle him on Twitter.