Sunday, November 20, 2011

Book 42: Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann


I saw this book a few months ago at my mom’s store and it seemed promising.  I love mysteries, so why wouldn’t I enjoy one where a flock of sheep solves their shepherd’s murder?  Unfortunately this book is not nearly as fun as I’d hoped.

In the Irish village of Glennkill, a clever flock of sheep finds their shepherd, George, with a spade sticking out of his body.  The sheep are curious about the spade and what George’s death means for them.  While the village goes a bit crazy over George’s death, the sheep band together to try and understand why anyone would want to kill George, who was a great shepherd that read to them everyday.  Out of the mostly trashy romance novels that were read to them, the sheep were influenced a lot by a murder mystery that George never finished.  Miss Maple, the cleverest of the sheep, along with others like Mopple the Whale and Othello set out to find the murderer and bring him or her to justice.  

I assumed that this book would be really funny—a mystery solving sheep named Miss Maple, how could that be boring?  But the book was frustrating.  It is all from the sheep’s perspective and there is so much that they can’t describe properly.  A lot of it made sense; the butcher would of course be an initial suspect for a flock of sheep, they think the priest is named god, etc.  Sadly, the book takes itself just seriously enough to make it uninteresting and therefore it was a chore to get through.

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