The Trouble With Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon

“Mrs. Creasey disappeared on Monday” is not a surprising first line of a mystery novel. However, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon is only part mystery. It is also a coming-of-age story with religious and psychological themes. This gem of a novel set in 1976 with flashbacks to 1967 reveals more about the mysteries of people than the fate of Mrs. Creasy.

Soon after we learn of Mrs. Creasey’s disappearance in the sweltering summer of 1976, we hear this exchange between Grace and Tilly, two 10-year-old friends who live on the same Avenue in a suburb of London.

“Why do people blame everything on the heat?” said Tilly.

“It’s easier,” I said.

“Easier than what?”

“Easier than telling everyone the real reasons.”

Worried and confused about their neighbor’s disappearance, these innocent, yet precocious girls decide to spend their summer discovering what happened to Mrs. Creasey. With encouragement from the Vicar, they also search for God because “if they find God, everyone on the Avenue will be safe.” Their investigation begins when they slither into a neighbor’s funeral and hear from the 25th Chapter of Matthew, “All the nations will be gathered before him (Jesus). He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then he will say to those on his left, Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. (This passage makes me angry for its cruelty and simplicity.)

Posing as Brownie guides, Grace and Tilly travel from house to house (Colombo style) interviewing and eavesdropping on their Avenue neighbors. In #6 they encounter Eric Lamb, who is obsessed with his garden but is really just grieving the death of his wife. In #10, they encounter Mrs. Roper who appears lazy and lethargic, but is actually mourning the car crash that killed her husband, but not the woman with whom he was having an affair. The girls even visit Walter Bishop who lives in #11 and was falsely accused in 1967 of kidnapping and returning a baby from the Avenue.

As a psychiatrist, Cannon understands that the Avenue’s residents are projecting their own fears and inadequacies onto Walter Bishop. They coalesce around harassing Walter Bishop because he is different. Now they blame him for Margaret Creasey’s disappearance. His persecution reminds me of Boo Ridley’s harassment in To Kill A Mockingbird.

I won’t divulge what happened to Mrs. Creasey. However, it is clear that before she disappeared, she acted like a psychologist to her neighbors. She listened to their fears and worries and helped them manage their shame and stress. Since they have all shared secrets with her, her neighbors worry that she has disclosed their personal struggles and their organized harassment of Walter Bishop to the police.

Joanna Carson’s wonderful novel exposes the deeper reasons for the neighbors’ behaviors. She focuses on the wide gap between what people surmise is happening in their neighbor’s lives and the reality. Cannon’s novel is trying to tell us that we are all goats and all sheep. All people have pain and suffering in their lives. The “suspects” that the girls encounter are mostly good but have their own secret struggles: Alcoholism, bankruptcy, OCD, bullying, death, anxiety and betrayal. The avenue is like a microcosm of the larger world. People put on their public face to mask their underlying pain. Cannon keeps the tone light, but her message is heavier. This book made me recall another biblical passage that sums up Cannon’s novel “Let he (or she) who is without sin cast the first stone.”