"Dark pines" by Will Dean

An audio book.

4 years ago the main character (Tuva, 26, female, with a deaf aid) moved to Sweden to be with her dying mother. Her father died in a Elk-related car crash that had been misreported. She's a journalist on the local paper. While she's driving in the wood a stag charges at her. It's scared off by a gunshot. Later she discovers that a body has been found in the wood, shot.

The victim was a teacher. His eyes had been removed as in a spate of murders in the 90s. Tuva wants to make a name for herself and sees this as a big chance. She interviews locals. David, a ghostwriter is a wierdo. He knows who has guns and how good they are at shooting. A married hunter, Hannas, goes to a strip club 3 times a week and sleeps alone. Tuva become friendly with his wife Frieda. He says that the police should leave the hunters to sort matters out. A taxi driver, a single father, scares her during a trip by stopping in the middle of nowhere, the doors locked. 2 old sisters carve strange fetish objects. A sexually explicit troll is left for her.

Someone might have planned to assault her. Another body is found. David is taken in for questioning. She's told not to write anything that would anger advertisers or reduce tourism. It's a small close-knit, interbred community.

She's bisexual, inactive, with little apparent interest in sex. She drinks. She lurks in the woods with binoculars in the dark to watch the wood's residents. She's friends with a 22 year old asian female who has a take-away van and keeps a gun as protection. She's told that her mother might only have a week to live.

David went to the strip club when young and was teased by the hunters. Perhaps he took revenge. Murders only happened in the years when the club was open. Hannas' eyes are fading. This might be his last year of hunting. Hannas has a son they've not seen for decades. Tuva finds frozen eyeballs in Hannas+Frieda's freezer.

There are continual risks - phone reception is bad, phone batteries are about to run out, her deaf-aids get wet and fail, the batteries are about to run out. It's night, she's not a local, she's a dyke.

She finds a body in the wood at night. Hannas? Frieda shot him. She finds Tuva, tells her that she killed the men because they were unfaithful. Their eyes were evil because they saw evil.

The 2 strange sisters shoot Frieda and Tuva is saved. Next day she visits her mother. She's got job offers from the Guardian etc.

We're with Tivu all the time. There's little back-story. She's rather reserved. "with audible clicks" doesn't sound right.

Other reviews

• Alison Flood (The story takes a little too long to get moving)
• Sam Jordison (Dark Pines is not always subtle. This is still a thriller that deals in shock, gore and outlandish behaviour. The more cartoonish elements must be indulged. But generally, Dark Pines clips along and is effectively immersive. ... My patience only began to wear thin at the end, when a previously sane character was revealed to be all kinds of “crazy”, and some pretty silly stuff was happening in freezers. But by that point I was already won over.)