Will Dean

Will Dean is a British-born crime writer, now based in Sweden, best known for a series of novels featuring a deaf journalist named Tuva Moodyson.

Biography

Will Dean was born in 1979 or 1980, and grew up in the East Midlands, UK, living in nine different villages before moving to London as a student to study Law at the London School of Economics. He met his wife, a Swedish national, at university and went on to work at various jobs after graduation, before finding a role designing and managing finance systems. He and his wife moved permanently to the house in 2012. At this time, Dean worked at home repairing vintage watches.

Writing career

After moving to Sweden, Dean took up writing. He finished at least one book that remains unpublished before starting work on his first published novel. That novel, Dark Pines, published in early 2018, features Tuva Moodyson: a deaf journalist at a provincial Swedish newspaper who gets caught up in the investigation of a murder. Dean has said that the character of Tuva was complete almost from the start:

Tuva came to me almost fully-formed. Writing Dark Pines, I visualised a huge overgrown pine forest in my mind’s eye. I zoomed in and saw a rough gravel track snaking through the trees. I zoomed in some more and saw a pick-up truck driving. I looked through the window and saw a young woman with hearing aids. I didn’t set out to create a series. I just started writing from Tuva’s point-of-view, and within a few chapters I knew this was different to anything I’d worked on before. Tuva’s voice came through very naturally. I got lucky, I think. It was shortlisted for the Not the Booker Prize. The nominating article noted that Dean "comes across both as an aghast outsider and an admiring immigrant to his Swedish setting." Dark Pines has been followed by five more novels featuring the same protagonist.

As he is not deaf, Dean employed a deaf blogger, Deafinitely Girly as a sensitivity reader. He initially contacted her via Twitter before Dark Pines was published, and has worked with her on all the novels in the series since. and Charlotte Jones acting as screenwriter.

Awards

Works

Tuva Moodyson series

Standalone novels

(UK paperback and e-book published as One at a Time, )