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Sharon Dempsey

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Little Bird: A Serial Killer Thriller Kindle Edition

by Sharon Dempsey (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.1 321 ratings

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Past and present traumas collide in Northern Ireland as a serial killer stalks the streets of Belfast in this gritty crime thriller.

Irish forensic psychologist Declan Wells has been off the beat since a car bomb in Belfast left him bound to a wheelchair. These days, the Troubles are supposed to be over. But with a serial killer on the loose, the city’s young women are in more danger than ever. When the killer strikes close to home, Declan is desperate to get involved in the case—but to do that, he’ll need a new partner.

Running away from a dead-end relationship, Welsh Detective Anna Cole is leaving Cardiff for a secondment to the Police Service of Northern Ireland. She’s hoping for a distraction from her life. What she gets is a case—and a partner—that will change it forever. As Declan and Anna try to catch a killer before another life is taken, they will both have to ask if it’s ever truly possible to leave the past behind.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B088NQ2143
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bloodhound Books (July 31, 2017)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ July 31, 2017
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2836 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 341 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #1,276,747 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #9,755 in Serial Killer Thrillers
- #10,589 in Political Thrillers (Books)
- #11,203 in Murder

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4.1 321 ratings

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Sharon Dempsey

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Sharon Dempsey is a crime writer and academic researcher. 'Who took Eden Mulligan?' is the first in a new crime series published in 2021, by Avon Harper Collins. She is a PhD candidate at Queen’s University, exploring class and gender in crime fiction.

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4.1 out of 5

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Antoinette

This years page turner

Reviewed in the United States on August 25, 2017

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I absolutely loved Little Bird, I loved the references to local landmarks, the charachters were strong, it sat on my mind as I carried out my day to day activites- I couldn't wait to get back to read it. I have recommended it for two bookclubs. Can't wait for Sharon Dempsey's next book, exciting new author on the scene!!!

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William Brown

Good read

Reviewed in the United States on November 9, 2017

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I enjoyed both the characters and the plot of this book. I will look forward to seeing another book by this authoress.

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Eva

Enjoyable serial killer thriller

Reviewed in the United States on August 1, 2017

Anna Cole is taking advantage of an offer for a secondment in Belfast to run away from a dead-end relationship in Cardiff, under the guise of trying to find out more about her birth parents.

In Belfast, forensic psychologist Declan Wells is dealing with the aftermath of a car bombing which has left him in a wheelchair. But his life is about to get even worse.

Amidst the turbulence in Belfast, a serial killer is targeting young girls. How are these girls connected?

First let me get this out of my system and issue a fair warning. I can read about the most gruesome details of a murder without batting an eyelid. But when it comes to animals, the urge to leave a book unfinished becomes increasingly overwhelming. Nobody warned me but I think it’s only right I do warn you. There is animal cruelty and there is quite a bit of taxidermy and I have no shame in admitting that I skipped those parts of the story as I preferred keeping my lunch down. 😄

The streets of Belfast are still not quite the place to be for an English cop or detective. I think the author really managed to bring that state of affairs to the fore without it being too dominant. For a city that has had its share of violence throughout the year, how does a generation adapt to the unknown mindset of peace? And in the middle of all of that, a killer is on the loose. Do his ghoulish acts have anything to do with the past? Or is there more at play?

While I found the storyline somewhat repetitive at times, the case the team is working on was an interesting one. You know, except for the icky bits. Little Bird is very well written and has a solid plot with a gripping investigation. I can’t say I particularly warmed to any of the characters but considering their circumstances, I’m not quite sure I was meant to. I mean, lets face it, it’s not like they’re having the best of times. Overall, it does what it says on the tin, or in this case the cover : an enjoyable serial killer thriller.

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Bonnie

Engrossing and Fascinating

Reviewed in the United States on October 1, 2017

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This book had me spellbound practically from the beginning. It is a must read for those who are into psychological mysteries.

Reviewed in the United States on October 19, 2017

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This was a decent detective story. Predictable, but a good read. A good feel on the characters and story line

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Kindle Customer

great debut novel, with an interest in to what happens next.

Reviewed in the United States on August 8, 2017

an intriguing novel, with the right hint of depravity especially with some of the scenes.... I found the main characters interesting and even if not always likeable, there was enough back story to want me to delve into more.... Anna is in a particularly difficult time in her life and some of her actions are questionable, but in some ways that made her character although flawed a great read.
The storylines weaved well even if you were unsure where it was heading, a very easy read with an interesting backdrop and a great debut novel, looking forward to reading more by Sharon Dempsey, and seeing where this series goes from here.

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Spicewalker

Chilling and dark mystery

Reviewed in the United States on August 3, 2017

When a young girl is murdered at her sister’s wedding, it is only the start of the horror in stor for the police. Recently transferred to Belfast on secondment, Anna Cole is keen to get her teeth into this case, a horrific and tragic murder in which the victim has links to the police department. Alongside her DCI Thomas King, Anna faces a desperate race to find a merciless killer as more bodies are found. There is no clear motive to the attacks, no sexual element to the murders, and so with the help of former pyschologist Declan Wells, Anna sets out to prove that there is more to the murders than meets the eye.

While this is billed as a serial killer thriller, by modern policing standards it only just makes the grade – three murders of young women, albeit in a very short space of time. The murders are both simplistic and yet grotesque in execution, as much as due to the way in which the bodies are staged and the killers calling card as for the act in itself. An that really is unsual and more than a little stomach churning.

And yet, I think that to simply classify this as a serial killer story would not really give you an idea of the whole book. This is not a killer on a rampage, their motivations quite tame in comparison to many with the serial killer moniker. The book takes us on much more of a journey than that, looking at the impact of political and religious division in Northern Ireland, in spite of the Good Friday agreement, and the constant undercurrent of violence and threat that plagues the peace across the city. Everything is poised on a knife edge, rattling both the police and the residents, and Sharon Dempsey does a really good job of capturing this within the story. The violent history is neither overplayed or glossed over, but it does inform a good portion of the story.

Anna Cole is an intriguing character. She takes the transfer not only to escape a failing relationship and her grief at the loss of her adoptive mother, but also to trace her family roots which lie in Northern Ireland. She is focused on work and seemingly very competent but she is not immune to the odd blooper, making a very grave mistake in her personal life which could have implications for the investigation and her safety. I did like her and was able to get behind her, although she carries quite a lot of baggage, some of which did threaten to overtake the story at times.

Declan Wells was another complex character. Injured in a car bomb, he has had to forego his chosen career and take up lecturing students instead. This does not stop him from throwing himself into the investigation, forcing his way in to both that and Anna’s life in the process. It is a very personal case for him but he approaches it with clinical precision. I wasn’t quite sure how to feel about him at first. He appears jaded, probably not surprising, but we do see his human side emerge half way through, something which did help me feel greater empathy toward him.

They are supported ably by a colourful collection of secondary characters, from the other police officers in the investigation, particularly DCI King, and also the killer. Although the story predomnantly follows Anna and Declan and their point of view, we are treated to some sections told from the killers perspective. Although they are not specific in naming the killer for the longest time, you do start to build a profile alongside the police investigation, making their identity quite obvious fairly early on. What we are lacking is true motive.

This is a very competent thriller. Despite the subject matter and the sense of jeopardy facing the young women of Belfast, it didn’t feel particularly fast paced. It still flowed well and I finished it in one evening. Certainly there were sections towards the end in which the tension increased, where both Anna’s and Declan’s lives were under threat, but the scenes did play out quite quickly and the ending was wrapped up rather quickly too and perhaps a little too neatly. That said I am very intrigued by the pairing of Cole and Wells and would love to see more from the pair. I’d be very interested to see where Sharon Dempsey took this series next, as they both have great potential.

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Joyce

Do not miss this one!

Reviewed in the United States on November 5, 2017

A great book. I read the whole book in two days...couldn't put it down! Hope there are more containing the characters I've come to love.

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TOMunro

Little Bird, in its complex setting and characters, delivers a very satisfying read.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 30, 2020

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Sharon Dempsey's debut novel resonated for me as one of her dual protagonists, Detective Anna Cole arrives from Wales on secondment to Belfast. It reminded me of my own arrival here at about the same time as Cole to take up a post in the world of Northern Ireland's education system. The dislocation that Cole experiences with the cultural preoccupations of Northern Ireland cutting across her expectations of normal professional focus echoed strongly with my own experience.

Sarah Williams in her book, "How to Write Crime Fiction" has a section on exotic locations, though that doesn't have to mean the Caribbean or even Venice. Williams draws a distinction between authors writing novels set in territory unfamiliar to the anglophone community - such as Sweden - and crime fiction in translation, where the setting is, to the author, mundanely familiar. Although Dempsey, in writing about her native Belfast, might not fit Williams' criteria for "exotic fiction" there is nonetheless a defamiliarisation in reading English language crime fiction through the lens of a still raw sectarian history. In some ways it is like reading fiction set in the America South in an era of systemic racism that permeated every aspect of familiar society.

Dempsey brings that grim backdrop of Belfast history into sharper relief with her other protagonist, the police psychologist forced into disabled retirement by a Republican bomb in which he lost his legs. Declan Wells is then hit by further tragedy when his own daughter becomes the first victim of a serial killer. The rich weave of sectarian interaction shows up in the behaviour and attitudes of Cole's new colleagues, and the rioting on the streets of youths bored and incited to violence by men left rudderless by "this weak piping time of peace."

Cole herself has other quests to pursue. Having been adopted she has seized the chance to track down the birth family from Belfast - and Dempsey gets to examine the troubled times that might inspire such an adoption. That curiosity appears to have been rekindled by the death of Cole's adoptive mother from cancer - another aspect of her past fo0r Cole and Dempsey to interrogate. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Cole's relationship with her live-in partner is not so much fizzling out as being crushed by her reckless commitment to her work and her flight from the pain of her adoptive mother's death.

The over-all effect is to make Little Bird a multi-themed novel. There has been much recent writing on hybridity in crime fiction and the opportunity afforded by the narrative focus in crime fiction to interrogate other issues. My own particular interest is in the issue of climate change, which Antti Toumainen wove into his Finish murder mystery "The Healer." Dempsey picks up issues of disability, relationships, grief and loss.

There is a tendency in some archetypal crime fiction for the detective to be simply the catalyst to the solution, resolving the puzzle by the end of the story but being essentially unchanged by the experience, for example Poirot, or Holmes. However, Cole and Wells are anything but unchanged and if anything the murders are the catalyst for them to address the issues in their own lives, as much as the impetus to track down a murderer who has impinged with particular cruelty on Wells.

Authors too, grow and develop through the writing of novels. I am thinking of the change in Ian Rankin's representation of DI Rebus between his first appearance in Knots and Crosses and his later established world weary persona, or between Simon Brett's first depiction of his eternally resting actor Charles Paris and the more comfortable comedic turn of the later books.

Dempsey's debut, while accomplished and offering satisfactions that do not simply lie in the resolution of the murder, does have some looser aspects which experience will surely tighten. There are places where the narrative depends on the characters making unwise choices, although to be fair Dempsey does signpost Cole's headstrong nature in her very first scene. However, there are still times when Cole is wondering why on earth she wandered into a dangerous street scene and the reader is echoing exactly the same question. Dempsey creditably portrays Wells' experience of disability, the physical inconveniences that can to a degree be circumvented, the psychological grief that never goes away. Cole's rashness, Wells' physical limitations, and the investigation's apparent tardiness in following up a really strong lead, combine to pitch both characters into peril at the novel's denouement. At the same time, however, the circumstances deprive our protagonists of the agency that the reader, if not realism, might have hoped for.

Wells' skill set as a psychologist - all be it one acting in an ex-officio capacity - is reminiscent of The Cracker series on TV starring Robbie Coltrane amongst others and it is the forensic psychology aspect of the police procedural that Dempsey focuses on. Indeed, we are frequently given insights into the mind of the murderer and the key questions are not so much "who dunnit?" as "how caught him?" It is perhaps that difficulty in reconciling the cerebral strengths of Wells with the crime fiction form's demand for an action driven ending, which leaves the protagonists ultimately reliant on resources other than their own.

Nonetheless, Little Bird, in the multi-layered complexity of its setting and its characters delivers a very satisfying read.

Sandy

Great characters, atmospheric setting & a creepy bad guy

Reviewed in Canada on October 10, 2017

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While perusing the Bloodhound website (Twitter will be the death of me) I stumbled over this book, read the blurb & thought yup, this is for me. Happily, I was right.

The main story line follows 2 MC’s as they try to track down a serial killer with a distinctive MO. On the surface they couldn’t be more different. DI Anna Cole came to Belfast in an attempt to leave her problems behind in Wales. Declan Wells used to work with local cops as a forensic psychologist. That was before a bomb took his legs. When one of the killer’s victims hits close to home, Declan is desperate to get involved in the investigation & seeks out the new DI.

In alternate chapters, we spend time with the anonymous killer & lets just say he has a few issues. Running in the background is the ever present problem of sectarian violence. Old prejudices die hard & there are those who will never give up the fight. It lends a subtle & constant unease to the story that clearly defines its sense of place.

The investigation, office politics & other cases ensure this is labelled as a police procedural. But it’s more than that. The author takes the time to really flesh out the MC’s & the experiences that have shaped them. We are privy to their thoughts, actions, memories & regrets. And gradually we begin to see they have more in common than professional duty. Both are outsiders. And both are on personal journeys to deal with pasts that prevent them moving on in the present. So I’m going to call this “literary suspense”. Ahem…my review, my rules.

Tension ramps up as Declan, Anna & her colleagues put the pieces together & the story sprints to the finish. It’s a satisfying end but not everything is neatly tied up. Here’s hoping there is a book #2 as I’d like to return to Belfast & see what the author has in store for these characters.

Agnesy

Believable and intersting

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 30, 2018

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Really enjoyed this, song story with believable characters, kept me guessing until the end, have recommended to my local book colleagues as a book of the month. Keep up the good work

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shirley

Little bird

Reviewed in Australia on November 12, 2017

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I loved this book. It was intriguing, fascinating and very readable. I didn't know what to expect. I am so glad I purchased it. The story was solid and kept me guessing on the out come. Will recommend this book to any one who likes a great story. Will look forward to more from this author.

A. Douglas

Excellent- needs to be a series

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 15, 2023

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I loved the traditional brutality of this book. A classic serial killer read. I loved the fact that Anna is a strong willed character who isn't treated any differently to her colleagues. She's strong and I love that she wanted Declan despite the effect it might have on her career!

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