Review: THREE BAGS FULL, Leonie Swann

• 
  This edition read on my Kindle (AmazonAU)
  
• aka THE SHEEP DETECTIVES
• Anthea Bell (Translator)
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0DT4QXTD9
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Allison & Busby, Publication date ‏ : ‎ 20 March 2025
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 347 pages 
• First published in 2005, English translation from German by Anthea Bell 2006, published Random House 2006, 351 pages, ISBN 978-0-385-60994-4
• Review written in 2009 

Synopsis (AmazonAU)

On a hillside near the quaint Irish village of Glennkill, the flock gathers around the dead body of their shepherd, George, who lies pinned to the ground with a spade. George cared deeply for the sheep, reading to them daily, and as a result they are far smarter than your average flock.

Led by Miss Maple, the sharpest sheep in Glennkill (and possibly the world), they set out to find George's killer. With an assortment of woolly investigators on the case, there are furtive missions into the village and a collection of two-legged suspects to chew over.

Dazzingly original, Three Bags Full introduces a band of detectives who are a breed apart.

My Take

Just recently the film THE SHEEP DETECTIVES starring Hugh Jackman has been recently released and The Chooser in our book group decided the book that the film was based on, THREE BAGS FULL,  would be on our list this month. For me this was a re-read as I originally read the book soon after it was released. My review from 2009 is here.

A word of warning for would-be readers. The film THE SHEEP DETECTIVES has a PG rating. The film really takes one or two themes out of the original book, the main one being the death of the shepherd and the attempts by his sheep to solve the problem of his murder. Various other cozy elements were then added to the story. The original book went well beyond that.

In fact after originally reading the book over 17 years ago I had forgotten most of the story, and began to feel a little bit duped because the plots were far from identical to that of the film.  

Once I had got over those feelings, I did enjoy the re-read, and the rather woolly sense of humour embedded in it. 

My rating: 4.4

Review: THREE BAGS FULL, Leonie Swann

First published in 2005, English translation from German by Anthea Bell 2006, published Random House 2006, 351 pages, ISBN 978-0-385-60994-4

The premise of THREE BAGS FULL is simple. Glenkill shepherd George Glenn is found dead in the paddock, murdered, a heavy spade stuck through his middle. So we have a murder mystery.

But what isn't so simple is that the tale of the investigation is told from the point of view of his flock, a rag taggle collection of rare breeds put together by George for their wool and rarity. George has been working on their intelligence too, reading to them every day. The cleverest sheep in the flock is Miss Maple, and her enquiring mind won't let her leave the puzzle of George's death alone. She is assisted by some other notable characters such as Othello, a black Hebridean sheep with four horns, who was once in a circus, and Mopple, a very stout Merino ram who never forgets anything.

Miss Maple impatiently scraped grass and earth up with her hoof. 'But it happened,' she said. 'There must be an end to the story. If George had finished the detective story we would know how it ended. And I want to know. You want to know too, I know you're curious about it. You just don't want to bother your sheepy heads.'

'It's too much for us,' said Cordelia, embarrassed. 'So many human things that we can't understand. And there's no-one to explain words to us now.'

Seeing things from a sheep's point of view with half-understanding can certainly be extremely perplexing and I thought Swann did a very good job of passing this perplexity on to the reader. There were times I was really scratching my head trying to work out what on earth was happening. I think I got the events straight, and I certainly know who killed George.

There were glimmers of ANIMAL FARM in this book, but Swann's ability to sustain the satire is nowhere near as good as Orwell's. There are some interesting characters among the flock, and also among the townspeople. We are given lots of clues that enable us to piece together events that have occurred in the last seven years (the span of a sheep's memory).

But this is not a book that will suit the impatient reader. Other reviewers have commented on how slow it is in patches, and I don't think Leonie Swann manages to sustain it's allegorical nature all the way through.

How to categorise it? A cozy perhaps, but not particularly light. There are little puzzles that keep the grey cells working all the time, and it is easy to miss a clue or two, with the result that what is happening becomes totally incomprehensible. There's humour too - Melmoth the disappearing ram for example; the minister hearing confession behind the grill and then discovering it is actually Othello in the box; the Winter Lamb, a troublemaker with a yen to be involved.

My rating 4.3

Other people's reviews:

• The Library Ladder loved it
• EuroCrime points to an excerpt
• Books and Musings from Downunder found it a bit drawn out
• Kittling Books said it had her thinking, smiling, chuckling
• 50 Books Challenge said it was a "delight"