Quirky Mysteries to Read Ahead of ‘The Sheep Detectives’
If you’re excited for the upcoming mystery The Sheep Detectives, now is the perfect time to warm up your sleuthing instincts with a few cleverly written and delightfully unconventional mysteries (and often animal-themed).
If you’re looking to set the mood before diving into Hugh Jackman’s new film The Sheep Detectives based on the novel by Leonie Swann, these reads will get you in the perfect investigative mindset.
Until the morning she finds a corpse in the back bedroom, the pristine walls and floor covered in blood, and flees the house in panic. Fifteen minutes later, the police arrive … and find nothing. No body. No blood. The only thing slightly out of the ordinary is the clock in that back bedroom, which is now running four minutes slow.
With no victim, the police are convinced there was no murder, but Audrey knows better. A man has been killed, and if they won’t do anything about it, she—and her annoying friend Lewis—will. Whodunnit is one thing, but this detective duo must also wrestle with when—and where on earth is the body?
It’s not long since they solved the murder of their neighbor, so they’re not rookie sleuths, and at least this time the case has no connection to their home. Does it?
To avert a national crisis, Gabby and Markus will need to look like they’re in love, planning their wedding—and enjoying the honeymoon cottage. Faking a relationship with the perfect man without actually falling for him? Piece of calorie-free cake, right?
Sergeant Hamish Macbeth is alarmed to receive a report from a woman in the small village of Cronish in the Scottish Highlands. She has been brutally attacked and the criminal is on the loose. But upon further investigation, Hamish discovers that she was lying about the crime. So when the same woman calls him back about an intruder, he simply marvels at her compulsion to lie. This time, though, she is telling the truth. Her body is found in her home and Hamish must sort through all of her lies to solve the crime.
Determined to get to the bottom of the mystery, they embark on furtive missions into the village, where they encounter some likely suspects. There’s Ham, the terrifying butcher; Rebecca, the secretive village newcomer; Gabriel, the shady shepherd of a strange flock; and Father Will, a sinister priest.
But when Elizabeth meets Nick, a wedding guest asking for her help, she finds the thrill of the chase is ignited once again. And when Nick disappears without a trace, his cagey business partner becomes the gang’s next stop. It seems the duo have something valuable-something worth killing for.
Joyce’s daughter, Joanna, jumps into the fray to help the gang as they seek answers: Has someone kidnapped Nick? And what’s this uncrackable code they keep hearing about? Plunged back into action once more, can the four friends solve the puzzle and a murder in time?
But they’ve barely unpacked their bags when Agnes sees something unsettling: two figures in hoods walk away from the hotel along the cliffs, but only one returns. Worried she’s witnessed a murder, Agnes tells the others. When the hotel ends up isolated from the outside world after a storm, it becomes clear that a murderer really is on the loose-and they’re trapped, just like the other guests!
Pony has been passed from owner to owner for longer than he can remember. Fed up, he busts out and goes on a cross-country mission to reunite with Penny, the little girl whom he was separated from and hasn’t seen in years.
Penny, now an adult, is living an ordinary life when she gets a knock on her door and finds herself in handcuffs, accused of murder, and whisked back to the place she grew up. Her only comfort when the past comes back to haunt her is the memory of her precious, rebellious pony.
Hearing of Penny’s fate, Pony knows that Penny is no murderer. So, being as smart and devious as he is cute, the pony must use his hard-won knowledge of human weakness and cruelty to try to clear Penny’s name and find the real killer.
This acutely observant, feel-good mystery reveals the humanity of animals and the beastliness of humans in a rollicking escapade of epic proportions.
Morgan Carter, owner of the Odds and Ends bookstore in Door County, Wisconsin, has a hobby. When she’s not tending the store, she’s hunting cryptids–creatures whose existence is rumored, but never proven to be real. It’s a hobby that cost her parents their lives, but one she’ll never give up on.
So when a number of bodies turn up on the shores of Lake Michigan with injuries that look like bites from a giant unknown animal, police chief Jon Flanders turns to Morgan for help. A skeptic at heart, Morgan can’t turn down the opportunity to find proof of an entity whose existence she can’t definitively rule out. She and her beloved rescue dog, Newt, journey to the the strait known as Death’s Door to hunt for a homicidal monster in the lake–but if they’re not careful, she just might be its next victim.
