It begins for Basil 'Banger' Peyton-Crumbe the day he dies in a pheasant-shooting incident.A tragic accident, thinks the local constable, but Banger's gundogs and Buck, the police dog, exhibiting a level of intelligence vastly superior to that of their owners, suspect murder. And for Basil, proud slayer of over 41,000 birds with the cheap old 12-bore he's had since childhood, things go from bad to very bad.
It begins for Basil 'Banger' Peyton-Crumbe the day he dies in a pheasant-shooting incident.
A tragic shooting accident, thinks the local constable, but Banger's gundogs and Buck, the police dog, exhibiting a level of intelligence vastly superior to that of their owners, suspect murder. And for Basil, proud slayer of over 41,000 birds with the cheap old 12-bore he's had since childhood, things go from bad to very bad.
For Basil has been reincarnated. As a pheasant.
'I loved it ... it's a book I've been waiting for all my adult life, for it feels to me like nothing so much as a rather adult version of that other great pheasant story, Roald Dahl's Danny, the Champion of the World' Rachel Cooke, Observer
'Eccentric and anthropomorphic...I loved it. It's high spirited, subversive and full of wry social observation and excellent jokes' Daily Mail