Book Review: "Deadly Animals" by Marie Tierney

I read about this book online and thought that it was going to be a blast. It had everything that someone who likes crime and thriller novels would be looking for, including but not limited to: an interesting protagonist you don't expect to get so invested, a cop who is often misled by others, weird rhymes that litter the course of the text which may or may not be related to the crime committed and of course, several different suspects for one crime. Yes, it seemed like the perfect crime and thriller novel and yet, it fell just short of being just that.

From the dialogue-heavy and borderline bland writing style and the fact that it became a bit repetitive and predictable towards the end, this book was a good concept that could have been better executed by the writer. It's probably up there with the better novels of its genre, but it definitely does not warrant the 'best of the year' title I see getting thrown around so often.

The book is set in Birmingham, England. No, I did not know that before I read the book and so, it immediately got interesting for me. A teenager named Ava goes creeping around at night and unfortunately stumbles upon the dead body of the delinquent, 14-year-old Mickey Grant. Ava reports it and even though she has a great interest in forensics, she doesn't immediately go poking around and yet, the main officer on the case requires Ava's help to solve the mystery. The more we learn about what happened to Mickey and why he was missing for two weeks before his death, the more twisted things become.

The novel being set in Birmingham in the late 20th century is strange and mainly because we know for a fact that there was a lot of crime going on. One thing I was concerned about in this book is that there are tons, and I mean literally tons of characters who pop in and out. It is difficult to keep track of them and yes, I would even say that Veronica is a character that pops in and out of the novel because she does not have any real direct impact on the events apart from that scene where they find Trevor's letters from Amanda. However, the characters that do have an impact are well-written and thoroughly fleshed out. For example: after reading the book, you will feel like you know and understand Ava properly as if she were a real person.

The ending was a bit of a let-down and that's mainly because there was no real huge moment of realisation. There is a time in the book where the reader can almost see it coming from a mile away and so, it is not something that makes us feel that same catharsis as say, reading an Agatha Christie, where the mystery is slowly revealed to us and most of the time we cannot tell who it is. I feel like after a while, I knew who the killer of Mickey Grant actually was. I think therefore, it was the reasoning of why Mickey Grant died that the author was relying on to make that impact of realisation upon the reader. Let's face it, none of the characters in this book except for the cop are good human beings at all: especially not Mickey Grant.

The structure of the novel can be a bit odd because it goes between concentrating on Ava's life to focusing on the case and honestly, there is way too much about Ava's life in the book. Sometimes, I feel like the book struggled to build suspense because of this and sometimes, it sort of took me out of the moment. I understand that we need to know her as if she were a real person, but adding in such weird details about her existence takes the reader away from the immediacy that a criminal case can bring, especially in the investigation stage.

All in all, I found this book to be a good concept for a novel and yet, there were things that I would still liked to have seen improved about it. It is not perfect no, but it is also not the worst thing I have read. An average book with too much of a hype, I believe.