Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story

Meandering Munching Meets Murder Mystery Three Bags Full is a q

Meandering Munching Meets Murder Mystery

Three Bags Full is a quaint story peppered with a murder mystery. In addition to getting the reader to understand the title, Leonie Swann brings to us the efforts a flock of sheep make to find their shepherd's killer. I won’t belabor the premise. It’s cute and the sheep personalities are distinct and reflective of those found in the general population. One can see hierarchy, ageism and social dysfunction just as rampantly and vividly through the sheep’s eyes. I would recommend this story, but reading it once was enough for me. The pace was much more meandering than I prefer. I started out with a hardcover, but opted to listen to the audio book. This made the various characters come alive. Munching and talking along their way the sheep commandeer the story. I’m sufficiently impressed with this writer, and I’d read her future works. I’d be particularly interested in the sheep’s next adventure.

Ireland, sheep and a mystery!

The concept of sheep solving a murder and telling the story was intriguing and for me,somewhat challenging at the start of this book. The animal characters are fun and developed well but can be too numerous at times. The murder mystery- while being the focus of the story- is hard to follow since we hear the details from the sheep and we have to fill in the blanks. This book is challenging to decipher and slow to start but it is worth it in the end.
A great idea for storytelling.

SLOOOOW start

One morning a flock of sheep wakes to find their shepherd, George, with a spade stuck in his belly. In that instant they make the decision to find his killer no matter what. They begin by going over what they know so far relying on Miss Maple, the smartest sheep in their town of Glennkill, Mopple the Whale (he's a sheep too) who has the best memory and Othello, the black ram who knows about the zoo and the world (author's words, not mine).

They carefully watch everyone who comes and goes while pretending to just be harmless sheep grazing the day away. As they follow the clues their suspect list includes the butcher, the priest, the religious fanatic Beth and Gabriel, another shepherd with a flock of sheep that snubs George's flock. You can bet that even though some of them are not the brightest sheep in the world they work together and eventually find the true killer.

Oh boy, where to begin on this one?? The first few times I picked up the book I passed right out and I wasn't even counting the sheep. If it wasn't for the fact that this was my book club selection and we met on Sunday afternoon I wouldn't have made it past page 50. It finally picked up the pace almost halfway through and the last half somewhat made up for the beginning.

I think that part of the reason I disliked the beginning so much is that the book was originally written in German and translated to English and it didn't flow well. The writing was a bit off and sometimes I'd have to read the same sentence or paragraph over again for me to get the meaning.

As far as positives I loved the way the sheep were smart but still did normal sheep things like getting into the forbidden vegetable garden and lusting after tomatoes at a picnic. I also loved the way the sheep revealed the killer but overall the story ending itself was pretty bad. I'm putting this one in the do not recommend column

like 100% merino

I loved this book! It was well written, funny, light-hearted (except for the murder) and those sheep were so sweet and clever. This is definitely on my favorite books list!

Original but not particularly compelling

In telling a murder mystery from the point of view of the deceased's flock of sheep, Leonie Swann certainly gets credit for originality. She also manages to create believable personalities for the varied members of the flock, not easy to do when you are talking about sheep. What is lacking is a good, compelling mystery. I did not find myself all that interested in who killed the shepherd, and the human characters in general were rather flat. Three Bags full offers a pleasant bit of escapism, but nothing for mystery lovers to sink their teeth into.

Very entertaining and original

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and have passed it on to many of my family and friends. The sheep were depicted quite believeable. I cannot think of anyone who would not enjoy this delightful book.

Did Not Deliver

I thought that the concept of the sheep solving the murder of their shepherd was interesting. I ended up being more interested in the human characters than the sheep themselves. Book was well written and easy to read.

Sheep happens!

A cute, clever book with a somewhat gimmicky premise, this reminds me a lot of the kind of humor found in the Nursery Crime series (as in, innocence embedded in the grotesque) or the "alien-other" found in books such as Art of Racing in the Rain, A Dog's Life or the Warriors series. Overall, the plot moves at a brisk pace, with occasional lulls into dullness (I imagine that's appropriate for a sheep's life), and I did get a kick out of the use of "sheepy" as a common adverb and adjective. A fun little cozy mystery to while away absurdly hot winter days.

Disappointing

The premise of this book sounded really cute and different. There were some interesting sheep perspectives, but overall, the expectation was this was going to be a fun and funny story but it dragged. Most of my book club did NOT enjoy it, like we thought we would.

Three Bags Full

Quirky take on a murder mystery !!! Clever character development of the non-human characters.

Quirky and leading

This fun and quirky book was a nice veer off my usual beaten path. I love mystery/thriller type novels, and picked this one up on a whim as my free book on "buy two get one free". It was the first one I read, and I couldn't seem to walk away! There are times when the plot and the continuous sheep-pondering gets a little slow and repetitive, but overall the lack of understanding and confusion of people behavior on the sheeps' part keep the book funny, lighthearted, and an interesting comment on human society all wrapped up into one. You really do find yourself cheering for the sheep, and loving the individual characters. I'll never look at sheep the same again...

A reviewer

I'm all for the traditional detective novel, but this one is so engaging and so interesting that I couldn't put it down! Swann's careful to stick mostly to the traditional form, but given that her detectives are sheep trying to understand humans enough to figure out why their shepherd was murdered, it's never dull. Not only is this book full of great sheep and wool jokes, but it is also full of great philosophical essays, puns, word-play, and allusions to great pieces of literature. This is not your average detective novel, that's for sure. I will definitely be reading this again!

Great Book

Justice! That¿s the word that rings out throughout this book. It is a funny story that, at times, is somewhat confusing. This reason being is because there is not just one main character, but twelve. In the story you follow around twelve sheep as they set out to find the murderer of their beloved shepherd George. Though these are not your ordinary sheep, every night their shepherd would read them a story, some romantic such as the Deborah novels, some scary like Diseases of Sheep, and sometimes mystery novels that often frustrated the shepherd into throwing the book away. As a result of him reading every night, the sheep became smarter and each one developed its own characteristic, there was Miss Maple, the cleverest sheep in Glennkill, Ireland and maybe even the whole world, Mopple the Whale who acquired his name from his overactive eating but has a very good memory, Cordilea who often likes to use big words, and many other sheep that you follow around Ireland to find the murderer of their shepherd. Along the way, they find out things that they didn¿t know about George and even of each other.

A reviewer

This is a very creative book since the narrator of the book is a flock of sheep. After a while, the different sheep develop their own personalities. Highly creative. I recommend reading this book in long reading sessions, I read it in short bursts of free time and was a little confused when the solution to the mystery revealed itself to me.

Sheep reveal the truth of their shepherd's murder!

Three Bags Full is written by a German writer about the murder of a shepherd of a flock of Irish sheep in Glennkill, Ireland. It's quirky and funny but also philosophical and sad. Actually, it's a great mystery in spite of, or, because the story is told by the sheep and seen through the sheeps¿ eyes and understanding. Swann convincingly relates the story through the various sheep: primarily Miss Maple, the clever one Zora, the brave one Othello, the mysterious black ram Mopple the Whale, the memory sheep and a very large ram. The flock loves their shepherd, George, but during the process of solving his murder, they come to question whether he is really a good shepherd and what makes a shepherd a good shepherd. There are many sinister suspects: Ham the butcher who smells of death, God, the minister who steals souls, and Beth who wants to save George¿s soul to name a few. In their quest to solve the mystery, they turn to Melmoth, the lead ram¿s mysterious twin who left the flock and then returned after George¿s death. Melmoth teaches them to be alert and brave so that they can find the killer, but the killer comes as a total surprise to the sheep and the townspeople. This is a wonderful novel on several levels. It¿s a great story, it¿s thought provoking, and it makes the reader work at interpreting in human terms what the sheep see through their eyes. Truly remarkable and memorable, this takes the animal characters of Rita Mae Brown or Sarah Wittig Albert one step further.

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