WILL DEAN AND DARK PINES

MURDERS IN A SWEDISH FOREST.
What a location to pick for a crime novel. ‘Wild Pines’ by Will Dean set in a Swedish swamp, has a definite edge that stirs the imagination. It is an animalistic world where creatures both small and bulky can threaten as well as the ‘hunting and shooting’ ones. Will Dean crafts pictures of danger and then there are the people. Dead ones too.

We saw Will Dean at Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate this July and I met him when he signed ‘Dark Pines’ for me. He lives in Sweden, and the book is set in a wild and swampy forest that he must know well. The setting becomes a character as strong as any of the human kind. It's both impressive and oppressive.

I became quickly hooked on his writing and I enjoyed how it is told through, Tuvo, a journalist who works for the local newspaper. He creates all his characters well, from the odd ones to seemingly normal ones, and I lived with them as the pages turned in my hand.

I liked the detail and his attention to detail. And not just to the major parts but to the everyday things that his characters do. It makes for very good reading. I travelled through the first pages rapidly and the middle section seems to be less so, but all of it was for a good reason. He has created so many images for me and there are some unusual ones to take in too. I loved the wild forest setting, but I wonder if an ‘urbanite’ would take to it as I have done. There is also a soft loving aspect weaved lightly throughout. A great read that I would highly recommend.

His next one and the first chapter of Red Snow is at the end and so you can sample the sequel. It says ‘ Read ahead and discover the case that's going to make her wish she’d left arctic Gavrik long ago…..’

However it is not in the shops until January next.

Since this is something different and he is a new writer - to us anyway - I thought that I would add this profile:

Will Dean grew up in the 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 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.