A treatise on porcine behaviour, perhaps!
Or the report of an incident involving precisely fifty-four swine! Well, kinda!
Fifty-Four Pigs is the first in a promised series of highly unusual crime novels, set in a fictional lakeside town in Manitoba with an obsessive veterinarian as the protagonist, ably assisted by his dog Pippen whose remarkable nose is the canine equivalent of a magnifying glass.
Dr. Peter Bannerman is on route to a four-legged patient when he witnesses the explosion of a friend’s swine barn containing – yes, you’ve guessed it – precisely fifty-four pigs.
When he later learns an investigation into the death and destruction yields up a human jawbone and, more troubling still, that his friend is a suspect, Bannerman cannot stay away.
Devoting his obsessive reasoning skills and Pippen’s nose to his own somewhat idiosyncratic enquiries, he ignores the dire warnings from his brother-in-law, who happens to be an RCMP officer and, in the process, puts himself and his dog in mortal danger.
Fifty-Four Pigs is written with a light touch, delightfully capturing life in a rural prairie town where everyone knows everyone, secrets are hard to keep, and animals are part of the food chain. Except, that is, for the many pet patients doted on by their owners as wholeheartedly as those living in high-rises in the city.
A nice touch is that though Dr. Bannerman is both eccentric and an introvert, he and his wife Laura, a knitting designer, are very content with their prairie life and each other.
Author Philipp Schott certainly writes about what he knows. A practicing vet with a practice in Winnipeg, Manitoba, he shares an old house on the Assiniboine River with his wife, two teenagers, three cats and a dog.
Schott already has an impressive canon of non-fiction works, from The Accidental Veterinarian, How to Examine a Wolverine and The Battle Cry of a Siamese Kitten, each a collection of stories from his practice.
In an entirely different vein, he is also the author of The Willow Wren, a touching exploration of extremism and the resilience of a small boy living through Hitler’s Third Reich. It is based on Schott’s father’s experience and has already become a favourite of book clubs and avid readers everywhere.
Schott has some way to go before his writing equals the expertise of the famous series All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot, also a veterinary surgeon. Or even the well-loved No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith.
Like Schott’s books, both series are what could be included in the genre of ‘delightful reads.’ A ‘delightful read’ is a book that immerses the reader in a world where reality takes a back seat, whether lounging on a beach under an umbrella or curling up before a roaring fire.
And on that note, the next mystery for Dr. Bannerman to solve and for readers to enjoy will be titled Six Ostriches.
Fifty-Four Pigs by Philipp Schott was published in April 2022 by ECW Press of Toronto. The format is paperback, 256 pages and the retail price is $21.95.