Like the most riveting BBC mystery, in which understated, deadpan intelligence illuminates characters’ inner lives within a...
A third appearance for former police investigator and private detective Jackson Brodie in this psychologically astute thriller from Atkinson (One Good Turn, 2006, etc.).
In the emotional opening, six-year-old Joanna witnesses the brutal killing of her mother and siblings by a knife-wielding madman in the British countryside. Thirty years later, Joanna, now a doctor in Edinburgh, has become a mother herself. Her baby’s nanny is 16-year-old Reggie. To Reggie, whose own mother recently died in a freak accident, Joanna and her baby represent an ideal family (Joanna’s husband, a struggling businessman, seems only a vaguely irritating irrelevance to fatherless Reggie). When prickly, self-loathing policewoman Louise Monroe comes to call on lovely, warm-hearted Joanna, watchful Reggie (think Ellen Page from Juno with a Scottish brogue) is struck by the similarities between the two well-dressed professional women. Actually Louise has come to warn Joanna that her family’s murderer is being released from prison. Louise chooses not to mention her other reason for visiting, a suspicion that Joanna’s husband torched one of his failing businesses for the insurance. Jackson’s connection to the others is revealed gradually: Jackson and Louise were once almost lovers although they since married others; as a youth Jackson joined the search party that found Joanna hiding in a field following the murders. Rattled after visiting a child he suspects he fathered despite the mother’s denials, Jackson mistakenly takes the train to Edinburgh instead of London. When the train crashes near the house where Reggie happens to be watching TV, she gives him CPR. Soon afterward, Joanna’s husband tells Reggie that Joanna has gone away unexpectedly. Suspecting foul play, Reggie involves Louise and Jackson in individual searches for the missing woman and baby. While Louise and Jackson face truths about themselves and their relationships, Joanna’s survival instincts are once more put to the ultimate test.
Like the most riveting BBC mystery, in which understated, deadpan intelligence illuminates characters’ inner lives within a convoluted plot.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-316-15485-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Provocative, entertaining and beautifully written. It’s not quite the tour de force that her Case Histories (2004) was, but...
If you could travel back in time and kill Hitler, would you? Of course you would.
Atkinson’s (Started Early, Took My Dog, 2011, etc.) latest opens with that conceit, a hoary what-if of college dorm discussions and, for that matter, of other published yarns (including one, mutatis mutandis, by no less an eminence than George Steiner). But Atkinson isn’t being lazy, not in the least: Her protagonist’s encounter with der Führer is just one of several possible futures. Call it a more learned version of Groundhog Day, but that character can die at birth, or she can flourish and blossom; she can be wealthy, or she can be a fugitive; she can be the victim of rape, or she can choose her sexual destiny. All these possibilities arise, and all take the story in different directions, as if to say: We scarcely know ourselves, so what do we know of the lives of those who came before us, including our own parents and—in this instance—our unconventional grandmother? And all these possibilities sometimes entwine, near to the point of confusion. In one moment, for example, the conversation turns to a child who has died; reminds Ursula, our heroine, “Your daughter....She fell in the fire,” an event the child’s poor mother gainsays: “ ‘I only ever had Derek,’ she concluded firmly.” Ah, but there’s the rub with alternate realities, all of which, Atkinson suggests, can be folded up into the same life so that all are equally real. Besides, it affords several opportunities to do old Adolf in, what with his “funny little flap of the hand backward so that he looked as if he were cupping his ear to hear them better” and all.
Provocative, entertaining and beautifully written. It’s not quite the tour de force that her Case Histories (2004) was, but this latest affords the happy sight of seeing Atkinson stretch out into speculative territory again.Pub Date: April 2, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-316-17648-4
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
A stylish post–World War I mystery with plenty of twists and strong female characters fully capable of negotiating them.
A titled lady and her clever maid solve yet another difficult case of murder.
It's 1920. Lady Phoebe Renshaw and her maid, Eva Huntford, have been instrumental in solving many a murder, including, most recently, that of Phoebe’s sister Julia’s husband (A Murderous Marriage, 2018). Lady Julia, pregnant and moping around her grandparents’ home, still blames herself for her husband’s death. Phoebe is surprised to learn that the family’s longtime head gardener has retired, leaving the job to Stephen Ripley, brother to Keenan, whose orchard produces pears for the cider known as perry. Stephen’s debut is marred when he’s seen bullying the garden boy, William. So when he’s found dead in the garden, not even his brother seems all that sad—especially since Stephen was evidently conspiring with a brash American who wanted to buy the orchard and build a hotel on the heavily mortgaged property. In the absence of William, who’s vanished, Keenan is arrested by the local chief inspector, who sees no need to look further. Luckily, Eva’s boyfriend, Constable Miles Brannock, is keeping an open mind. Eva worries about her sister Alice, who comes to visit without her children and seems out of sorts and perhaps a bit too interested in Keenan, her old boyfriend. Phoebe fears that William’s seen the killer and gone into hiding and ponders who’d want Stephen dead. Local pub owner Joe Murdock, whose business depends on perry, almost came to blows with the American, and sheep farmer Fred Corbyn stands to lose pasture and watering rights if the property is sold. The villagers, who loyally try to give Keenan an alibi, pitch in to harvest the pears and make the perry while he languishes in jail and Phoebe and Eva seek to unearth a killer.
A stylish post–World War I mystery with plenty of twists and strong female characters fully capable of negotiating them.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-1742-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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