Three Bags Full

It’s been awhile since I read the book as well, so I’ve forgotten many of the details. Three Bags Full had so much potential. I mean, a detective story where sheep are your detectives? How unique is that? However, I think it fell short. I’ll explain why later.

The names the author gave all the characters (both sheep and humans) were very interesting:
Miss Maple for the older, female sheep – quite the nod to Miss Marple…Agatha Christie’s famous detective.
Ham was an interesting name for a butcher.
Othello as the black ram. Interesting choices, just to list a few.

The author, by necessity, gave the sheep human attributes – like the need to be counted: “All the sheep were afraid of being missed out of the count, because then they might disappear,” pg. 67. I think it’s a human need to “count,” to matter, to be important to someone.

I think the book lost some steam somewhere in the middle – it was just too long. The novelty of the sheep detectives wore off with some of the minutiae in the book.

SPOILER ALERT
But here’s where I really think the book fell short. What started off as a murder mystery ended as a suicide. I think that was a cop out – rather than have the sheep actually uncover a murderer (which I think would have been very interesting. How would you feel as a murderer to be found out by a bunch of sheep), the victim killed himself. I just think it was too easy.

Anyway, did anyone else have the sheep drawings at the bottom corner of the right-hand page? When you thumb quickly through the book you get a jumping sheep? That was kind of fun.