Thirteen-year-old Ava Bonney is unlike other children. Exceptionally bright, she has an obsessive interest in the rate at which dead animals decompose. The motorway she lives by regularly offers up roadkill, and in the dead of night Ava likes nothing better than to pull her latest discovery into her roadside den so she can study it. But one day when she arrives she stumbles across the body of fellow pupil, Mickey Grant. DI Seth Delahaye is given the case, one of the most challenging of his career. But Ava is not the sort of person who will step back and let someone else take charge when children like her are dying. She uses all her unusual skills and deep local knowledge to try to track down the serial killer in her community.
My thoughts: this was so good, dark and twisted and with an incredible protagonist in teenager Ava, a young woman with a passion for science and pathology in particular. She’s checking on one of her research projects late at night when she finds the body of a schoolmate, a bully, but someone she knows. He’s been brutally murdered, and Ava decides to investigate.
I loved Ava’s relationship with DI Delahaye, despite her being so young the detective trusts her instincts and her understanding of the area and other teenagers. Ava is incredibly smart and has read books on so many subjects and seems to have memorised all the things she’s learnt. Her mum doesn’t see how brilliant she is, in fact most of the adults around her don’t, just Delahaye, her dad and her best friend John’s Grandpa, who keeps an eye on their investigation.
I hope there’s a sequel with a grown up Ava putting all her scientific knowledge to use solving crimes for the police, either as a detective or as a CSI.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 