JK Rowling's new book 'The Casual Vacancy' - "Yay!" or "Meh!"

[Minty]

So the wait is finally over and Jakey has announced her new book now she's finally finished milking the Potter cash cow to death the final perfected draft.

According to the blurb, it will be a “blackly comic tale that is thought provoking and constantly surprising” that will centre around the death of villager Barry Fairweather that leaves the seemingly perfect village of Pagford shocked, with the by-election for his council election seat tearing the place apart.

(Start the betting now on who will be the first Simmer to make a Pagford world: 2/1 - Rflong7; 5/1 - Conorsim; 10/1 - Johnnywr; 20/1 Bobblebean and Quailhogs; 50/1 Bar!)

Much as it sounds interesting, I'll be interested in how she makes a Parish council by-election so fraught. Most Parish councils struggle to get people to stand for them (even though they do very little anyway). It used to be a familiar tactic of the local press on the behalf of a local parish council leader to run a scare story at election times about communist or fascist candidates being rumoured to be putting their names forward, or getting the local member of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party to stand so that everyone would be terrified into standing to stop them.

My guess is that the unfortunate Barry Fairweather will have been vetoing some sort of piece of planning permission or sale of common ground that was the Parish Council's responsibility - it would be the most likely cause for a murder and for a bitterly contested by-election. One of the only times parish council elections ever become hotbeds of political intrigue and fighting is when land under its control is sold off and everyone starts fighting about what to do with the windfall (usually with people trying to find ways to put it into their own pockets!)