013. Three Bags Ful (2005).

Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story

 by  Leonie Swann (2005).

                                                                  

A shepherd George was killed by a SPADE during the night.

In order to revenge their beloved shepherd, the flock of unique and highly intelligent sheep decides to take matter to their own hand and find the murderer.

Personally, I don’t think mystery can get any weirder/cleverer than this.

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layers. –Because the main characters in this book are all SHEEPS ( = quite simple-minded animals), their behavior and judgment are quite often affected by their sheep-instinct. 

In other word, most of them  are really happy when there are enough grass to chew, good story to listen (yes, they love good bed time stories ), and bright sunlight to warm their body/mind.

Therefore, they are not exactly the best group to go after the murderer. But certainly, the funniest and possibly the cutest!!

Here is the group.

Miss Maple. Just like Miss Maple from A Christie’s book, she is the sheep with a brilliant brain. She does have limits like other sheeps, but pretty much the only sheep who can actually investigate.

Time to time, she gets irritated by her herd’s ignorance and simplicity due to their happy-go-round sheep-instinct. Never the less, she takes good care of them.

The one of only three sheeps who can stay focused and think ahead. The others are Melmoth and possibly Othello.    

Othello. A very quite and tough black ram with sharp four horns.

He used to travel with the circus. That horrible experience (trauma) makes him completely mistrust humans.

He has “a voice of reason“which follows him everywhere. Literally someone is talking to his mind every time he takes an action.

Mopple the memory sheep. He memorizes everything he sees and hears although he doesn’t understand any meaning of it.

Always hungry-the fastest eating sheep in the flock.

Sir. Ritchfield. A leader (old) sheep. He has a poor eye sight but good eyes.

Melmoth. A twin brother of Sir. Ritchfield. Only sheep ever to venture into the wild (traveling) and comes back alive. Very mysterious. Few crows are following him all the time (they even sit on his back!!).

Cordelia. A poet.

Zora. A brave and beautiful (?) sheep.

There are a lot more characters in this book, but these are probably the most important. 

I didn’t mention any humans above, because humans are considered simpler and quite often dumber than their kinds by sheeps (Sheeps understand the human languages but NOT the vice versa).

They are also drop dead HILARIOUS!! All of them!!

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lace. – Irish village of Glennkill which I don’t even know it exists. Their barn is located on top of the hill with a magnificent view of ocean and beautiful field of delicious grass. 

Ever since their shepherd George cuts tie with all the rest of the villagers, they have been the king of the hill.

The near by village has a small population with one bar (Mad Boar), one butcher shop and pretty much nothing else.

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lot. – There are two parts of stories in the novel. Like a lot of the first book in the series (if this is a series), this book put aside first half to establish the characters (SHEEPS, off course). 

Almost all the sheeps have their own story to tell, philosophy to share and nightmare to hide.    

The first half, about 180 pages, is filled with all kinds of side stories and backgrounds of main characters. Author must spend incredible amount of time, carefully developing each characters. 

Because there are at least 20 completely different characters (sheeps!) in this book, in order to help out readers to memorize them, the publisher list all the main personals in order of appearance, just after the title page.

Now the other half.

George was killed by a SPADE. This is weird, right? Wait until the story gets moving.

Why did he get killed? 

1.      Did he get killed for drugs? There are few guys looking for grass in George’s house.

2.      A mysterious dark figure is lurking in the dark.

3.      The flock’s new shepherd Gabrieal has something else sinister in his mind.

Then police finds out that George was poisoned before speared with a spade!!

1.      Was George killed because he was never belong to the herd (villagers)?

2.      Because he owns the prime land with magnificent view and never let anyone near it?

3.      Or because he dealt drugs with gangs and ignore their warning about something?

With the second half, the story actually gets a bit intense and with the intensity, the level of challenges sheeps have to face raises, too. And those new obstacles that they have to conquer make them smarter, more resilient and quite tougher than before.

Naturally, the story moves faster, becomes much more interesting and really really really funny.

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erdict. –Even if this book looks like it is intended for the children (All those funny and unusually intelligent animals Do remind me of ‘Shaun the sheep”), it is actually for adult reader only. 

Once each character is firmly established with variety of unique personality, this book just takes off!

Since even if all the sheeps posses human intelligence and creativity, they are NOT humans, suspense comes from the most unexpected places. Believe me, this is the clever and most original mystery at its BEST!! Funny, too.

Like the cover says,

“The Best Sheep Detective Novel You Will Ever Read!!”