The Beast of Barcroft went in a direction that I wasn’t expecting, in fact, on reflection, I’m not quite sure what I was expecting but whatever it was this surpassed it in many ways and I hope there will be more instalments in the future. We start the story finding out about the neighbour from hell, Madeleine Roux.  Well, that’s probably a bit of an extreme description but it’s certainly the way her neighbours feel about her.  Madeleine likes to feed the birds and critters.  Basically, each and every day she places food out on her back porch.  Unfortunately, as you may know, or have found out, if you place food outside it doesn’t just attract the soft and fluffy animals that you want – it attracts everything, free food is free food and nothing gets attracted more to a big mess of vittles than vermin and Barcroft is swiftly becoming overrun. Pull up a pipe in your garden and it will likely be followed out by a slick wave of rats. Ben McKelvie and his girlfriend have just bought a house in the area thinking they were moving up a little in the world.  Little did they suspect that…