Summer reads

Thrills and chills: These mysteries and science fiction novels will transport you to a higher plane.

Editor's note: This is the final installment in a four-part series of summer reading recommendations.

By Salon staff

Read more: Books, Science Fiction, Elmore Leonard, Books Features

June 25, 2007 | All month, Salon's staff has been recommending summer books that won't make you feel cheap and empty. (Or maybe they will, in the best possible way.)

In previous weeks, we featured thrillers, chic lit and memoirs. In this final installment, we bring you an assortment of mysteries and science fiction. They include a furry detective tale with a flock of sheep as the primary sleuths; a lighthearted mystery about a grumpy mobile librarian who finds himself at the center of a kidnapping; a sexy spy zinger courtesy of Elmore Leonard; a political thriller teeming with black ops and terrorist intrigue; a virtuoso mashup of SF alternative universes and Brazilian culture; and the fantastical journey of a gang of alter-ego heroines.

Do you have summer reading recommendations? Use the letters section to share your own picks.

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Mystery fiction is a crowded genre, and the frantic search for fresh ideas has led authors to concoct ever more unusual detectives -- obsessive-compulsives and psychics; the blind and brain damaged; historical figures and fictional characters from classic novels. But surely none of these notions is as unlikely as the premise novelist Leonie Swann takes for "Three Bags Full." First, she has a total of 19 sleuths, and second, they're all sheep. A small flock from an old, wool-bearing Irish breed, they live an idyllic existence grazing in a seaside field under the care of their beloved shepherd, George. Then one morning George turns up dead in the field with a gardening spade embedded in his chest. The flock, in a muddled sort of way, decides to find out who's responsible.

These sheep have the advantage of an exceptionally cultured background; George used to read aloud to them every evening, mostly from trashy historical romances. They understand human speech, albeit in a comically literal fashion. Nevertheless, as sheep, they face some pretty harsh limitations when it comes to conducting a murder investigation: They can't talk, they have no hands to pick up clues or take notes, they don't get out much, they're easily frightened and, last but not least, they are not renowned for their deductive powers. Even Miss Maple, the too cutely named "cleverest sheep in Glenkill and quite possibly the cleverest sheep in the whole world," has trouble remembering all the information the flock manages to gather. Fortunately, she can rely on Mopple the Whale, a portly gourmand of a ram who serves as the flock's "memory sheep" because he never forgets anything. And then there's the keen eyesight of Sir Ritchfield, and the excellent nose of Maude, and the speedy hooves of Lane.

Teamwork winds up being the flock's secret weapon, but it would be dishonest to say that learning the truth about George's death is what kept me reading "Three Bags Full." Of course, I wanted to see if Swann could pull off such a difficult experiment (she does). But it was really the farcical aspects of the novel's culture clash that won my heart -- for a culture clash is just what the book describes. For the sheep, human behavior is the real mystery. Believing that any creature's soul is proportional to its sense of smell, they regard people as pitifully underendowed in that department, and the confusing way the villagers talk about spiritual matters leads them to the hilarious conclusion that the local priest is God (and they don't think much of him). They have their own ideas about such matters; like the rabbits of "Watership Down," Swann's sheep have their own ovine mythology.

This sheepy society -- sometimes touchingly naive, sometimes surprisingly astute -- has an inexhaustible, quirky charm. Swann has imagined what it must be like to know truth through one's nose (the sheep can smell lies, fear and hatred) and to regard solitude as a kind of blasphemy. Eventually, the intrepid flock's investigation even begins to affect the human beings around them, culminating in the most remarkable entry ever in the local pub's Smartest Sheep in Glenkill contest. By that point I was inclined to award a prize to Swann, but for what -- the most ingenious and winning implementation of a fictional four-footed detective? There can't be much competition on that front, but Swann would win, all right, and by more than a nose.

-- Laura Miller

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