When in doubt, kill a
bunny, says Tony.
This world is divided into
two kinds of people. People who read the stories of Beatrix Potter and go
‘Awww,’ and people who read the stories of Beatrix Potter and want to claw
their own eyes out while simultaneously giving each and every cutesy-wutesy
properly-dressed little fluffball a right good drubbing.
Simon A Forward, writer of
The Mistpuddle Murders here contrives a story which smashes talking, properly-dressed
human-sized woodland creatures together with a touch of biomechanics and a
heaping helping of the likes of Agatha Christie or The Midsomer Murders (from
which the title seems gloriously stolen and twisted), to give us murder among
the cutesy-wutesies.
Not just murder, as it
turns out, but rather a cunning, devious murder, with Tegan and Nyssa playing
Poirot, gathering a roomful of furry, flappy and prickly suspects and
reconstructing the reality of boiling passions and tensions among them, leading
up to the murder.
It’s very much a
Doctor-lite story, and it doesn’t stray far beyond the tight, claustrophobic,
twitchy-nosed remit it sets itself, but there’s tremendous fun to be had here,
with Sarah Sutton giving the reading a headlong run as she delivers not only
Nyssa but a not-half-bad and likely-to-get-her-glowered-at Tegan, as well as
the full range of cosy-crime stereotypes – the timid village lady, the
bumptious military man, the blinking academic or scientist etc – all within the
cute-creature concept.
From Beatrix Potter to Alison
Uttley, to Wind In The Willows, to Rupert the Bear and Paddington Bear and
onward, children’s fiction is littered with anthropomorphic animals. Simon
Forward takes us beyond the cute, to give us a laugh while examining what it
would be like if animals really had
human characteristics.
In a village seemingly
created or at least populated by author and bio-engineer Lyndsay Wood, the
animals are particularly human –
there are burglars…burgling, clandestine affairs to keep quiet, dark
double-dealings and seething resentments, all among the fluffy folk. Wood
herself has passed on – and who, retrospectively, can say whether that was all it seems? - but her cottage
has been bequeathed to Ginger Hopkins, smart bio-bunny of the parish.
The Doctor has gone
bounding ahead to meet the multi-talented Ms Wood, unaware of her premature
demise. Nyssa and Tegan, in an effort to catch him up, almost run over the
hedgehog Professor Pricklethwart with their car. Concerned they’ve turned him
into roadkill, they take him to the nearest cottage they can find, and meet
Ginger, who offers them help, tea and biscuits.
Minutes later, Ginger
Hopkins lies dead in her chair.
Is there bryony in the
biscuit barrel? Cyanide in the sugar bowl? Or is something altogether darker
going on in the village and its surrounding woodlands?
Without the mysteriously
absent Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa investigate – Nyssa analysing the body of the
bio-engineered bunny and the toxin that undoubtedly killed her, and Tegan…well,
being Tegan.
But who among the locals
has the motive for murder?
Colonel Fortingbrush, the
fox with a penchant for grouse-shooting?
Professor Pricklethwart,
the scientist who wouldn’t say boo to a goose if there happened to be one?
Miss Tabitha Nutkins, the
squirrel who keeps herself to herself – or does she?
Reverend Brockley, the
badger keen to minister to his flock?
Or Miss Felicity
Nightheart, the bat with a very precise sweet ‘tooth’?
It could be any of them –
but who has abandoned the morality with which they were written and
bio-engineered?
It’s all gloriously tongue
in animal cheek, this story, but Forward does his job with care – he creates a
murder mystery with motive, complication, misdirection, touches of darkness and
an unusual problem, to which the Doctor, emerging when most of the hard work’s already
been done, provides a rather straightforward solution – though whether he
actually does or not is another strand of philosophical pondering altogether.
It probably shouldn’t
work, this smashing together of anthropomorphic animals and cosy crime. Forward
almost dances you through it though – clue by clue, motive by motive, suspect
by suspect, ending with perhaps the best image of Tegan you’ll have had in a
while, and the Doctor throwing in a dark dilemma: if you know you’re a created creature, where does your morality lie? With
your creator’s example, or in your own self-determination? Do the animals of
Lyndsay Wood have free will? And if they do, where does the animal end and the
human begin?
The Mistpuddle Murders is
terrific fun with a thought or two provoked at the end, just to give you
something to ponder after you finish it. With his previous Short Trip,
Mel-Evolent twisting Disney, and this story taking the traditions of
anthropomorphic animal stories and cosy villain crime novels and smashing them
together till they blend, Simon A Forward’s becoming a go-to writer for pithy
social and philosophical shenanigans, but always with a perfectly Doctor
Who-appropriate story underneath. Get yourself The Mistpuddle Murders today –
it’s the right thing to do.
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