Bad Apples – Will Dean

My thanks to Anne Cater of Random Things Blog Tours for the opportunity to join the Bad Apples tour.

Tuva Moodyson is one of the best new characters to have emerged into the crime fiction arena over the past few years. The journalist who keeps finding trouble deep in the wooded areas of Sweden as she shines a light into some of the darker aspects of life in this Northern outpost.

Bad Apples does not start well for Tuva and, skipping ahead, it only gets worse. While driving through the forest Tuva hears a scream. She stops her car to investigate and finds a woman traumatised. The woman has found a body in the woods, a very dead body. Tuva knows the man in front of her is dead as someone has removed his head.

The police are summoned and when they come to take over what has become a crime scene Tuva puts on her journalists hat and starts asking questions. She has a good relationship with the police, not least because her partner is one of the officers in attendance, but with no real leads themselves the police are not too keen to overshare with Tuva…can she keep the missing head out of the paper?  Naturally the very next day everyone in town knows there was a decapitated body found, small towns do not need newspapers to print stories as word has a way of getting around.

Working the story leads Tuva to Visberg, a small town which has recently come under Tuva’s remit due to the Visberg newspaper closing down. Visberg is even more of a closed community than “Toytown” where Tuva lives. Half the population appear to be related to a single (powerful) family who live an affluent life and enjoy a Stepford Wives lifestlye at their luxury golf course. The other half of the town do the work and keep the town ticking over. Ticking being the key word in the case of the guy that runs a watch emporium which houses many rare timepieces. There is also a Gaming Cafe (a very definite plus for Tuva) which is run by twins, a pizza cafe managed by a former “Yugoslavian” who is rumoured to have been summoned to The Hague to be investigated for War Crimes, there is a dentist, a super storage facility with some dark secrets within and if you like the troll making sisters from earlier books then you will be delighted to know they (and their weird trolls) return too.

Visberg is remote, peculiar and dangerous for strangers. Each year, in the lead up to Halloween they celebrate their own annual festival: Pan Night.  Except officially they don’t. The festival apparently ended some years ago and nobody engages in the unusual celebrations which were once reported upon. Which is why Tuva is walking the streets watching in bewilderment as the chaos and carnage of Pan Night unfolds around her, masks are worn, people are howling into the night, public shagging, dead animal entrails and something even more shocking which will end the “celebrations” early.

Tuva is too close to a killer. She is receiving messages at her home warning her she needs to stop digging into stories at Visberg. She is also getting closer to her partner Noora and this alarms Tuva as she really doesn’t want Noora to see her if her “busy head” returns and Tuva slides into a darkness. She fears she has too much to lose.

Will Dean does a fantastic job of turing Tuva’s wooded world a dark and atmospheric isolated setting which serves a crime thriller so well. He writes Tuva brilliantly and I felt there was a larger emphasis placed upon her deafness in this book which hadn’t been quite so evident last time around. I only mention it as I felt the first book was one of the best depictions I have encountered of handling a character with hearing difficulties – that is repeated in Bad Apples. The coaxing people to help her hear them, dealing with her hearing aid, everyday loud noises she has to contend with and using her deafness to manipulate a situation. It never feels forced or artificial and it brings an authenticity to the lead character which elevates the whole story. Tuva feels real, her concerns are ours, her frustrations cause us to be concerned for her – this reader is hooked and I keep those pages turning. Plus she is a gamer. In 2021 why do so many characters in books happily sit and watch tv or films but hardly any play videogames? Gaming is everywhere, consoles, phones, gaming cafes on our high streets but hardly in our fiction.

Bad Apples. A story which will pull you into the darkness and keep you there to that very last shocking endgame. You will instantly want more, trust me when I say you will be counting the days to the next book.

Bad Apples is published by Point Blank Crime and is available now in Hardback, Digital and Audiobook format. You can order your copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08WM3MCNP/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1

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