One of the reasons I love going to book festivals is the fact that it is a great opportunity to meet new authors, and the Capital Crime certainly had no shortage of those. One of the books I picked up after seeing the author on a panel was Deadly Animals by Marie Tierney, and I can honestly say it was just as good as promised.

Deadly Animals introduces us to 13 year old Ava. She isn’t however your typical 13 year old, she is fascinated with dead animals and meticulously details studies of roadkill she finds in her own version of the body farm. She devours crime fiction and so when she is out checking her experiments and comes across the dead body of young Mickey Grant she sees an opportunity to help out. Detective Seth Delahaye has never seen crimes as horrific as this murder, it looks as though the victim was savaged by some kind of animal. When a second boy goes missing he realises that the key to solving the case could be the intriguing and brilliant Ava.

Deadly Animals was an absolutely stunning novel that I absolutely loved. I felt it was probably one of the most original and compelling books I’ve had read all year (and I read alot!) The premise was really unusual with the main character being an incredibly intelligent and slightly odd 13 year old but with a storyline that was incredibly dark. I loved the fact that although the protagonist is a 13 year old this is definitely not a novel written for children. It’s a macabre delve into a 13 years world but with very ‘adult themes and content’ as the warnings would say. 

I absolutely loved the character of Ava. Smart beyond her years yet I didn’t find her precocious. The character of Detective Delahaye completely plays second fiddle to Ava but is still a really interesting character. I enjoyed the banter between the two of them and you could feel the battle that he plays in his own mind about allowing Ava to be too involved.

The storyline itself was fascinating. There were times when it felt as though it was heading towards becoming a horror story rather than a crime but equally the investigation was very much grounded in reality. The story was set in the 1980’s which also gave a different element to the story as the trappings of social media and internet didn’t get in the way. 

I would highly recommend this debut novel and sincerely hope that we haven’t seen the last of Ava and Detective Delahaye.