Throughout her career, Kate Atkinson has proven herself to be a versatile writer, equally adept in two genres. Not content with writing critically acclaimed literary novels such as Life After Life (2013), a stunningly imaginative and incredibly moving saga about one woman’s many chances and choices, Atkinson also publishes crime novels. Her hero is Jackson Brodie, a former police inspector turned private investigator. Jaundiced by life but dogged in his pursuit of justice, Brodie is a compelling character whose cynical attitude and biting wit have endeared him to hordes of readers. “Do you always have to see the dark side of everything?” his ex-partner Julia asked him in his last novel, Big Sky. “Someone has to,” he replied.
Five years later, Brodie is back on another assignment. Death at the Sign of the Rook is his sixth adventure, and is open to all – Atkinson fans, who will love this latest installment in the series, and newcomers, who can enjoy it both as a standalone work and as a suitable introduction to Brodie’s world. In many ways, the novel is as it always has been: set in Brodie’s – and his creator’s – native Yorkshire, it contains tried-and-tested tropes, recurring characters, and the author’s trademark humor. But this time, Atkinson tries something boldly original, creating a contemporary crime while paying tribute to the golden age of crime fiction.
We get a taste of the latter in the book’s first chapter. In the great library of Burton Makepeace, “one of the finest stately homes in England,” an increasingly exasperated Brodie watches a troupe of third-rate actors put on a creaky crime thriller. Having whetted our appetites, Atkinson rewinds a week to the scene of a real crime. Siblings Ian and Hazel summon Brodie to their recently deceased mother’s house. They don’t think her death is suspicious—Dorothy Padgett was a 96-year-old invalid who died in her sleep—but what caused a stir was the disappearance of a Renaissance portrait that hung in her bedroom.
Brodie takes on the case and sets out to find Melanie Hope, the dead woman’s caregiver, who has also disappeared. His suspicions are aroused when he discovers that she had a disposable cell phone, a false address, and most likely a false name. His curiosity is piqued when he learns that a valuable painting and a trusted housekeeper disappeared from a nearby mansion several years ago. This prompts him to contact the cop who worked on the case, his old friend Reggie Chase. Despite their initial misgivings (“We’re not partners, we’re not ‘Brodie and Chase, detectives'”), Reggie teams up with this pesky rule-breaker.
After joint efforts and individual investigations, the two reach Burton Makepeace, just in time to sneak into a crime weekend. While a snowstorm rages outside, preventing anyone from going out, they watch Countess Woranskaya, Reverend Smallbones and the “sophisticated little Swiss detective” René Armand in their theatrical drama. But Brodie doesn’t wait long, because it becomes clear that he will find his perpetrator in this house, among the assembled guests.
Like the previous Brodie books, Death at the Sign of the Rook is a slow-moving crime novel. Atkinson’s narrative is not consistent, at times deviating from Brodie and his investigations to tell the backstories of minor characters. Over the course of individual chapters, we meet Simon, a vicar who loses his faith, his family and then his voice; Ben, a battle-hardened former major who lost a leg in Afghanistan; and the formidable Lady Milton and her descendants, who, having fallen on hard times, have opened the doors of their draughty, crumbling mansion to offer paying guests “the Downton experience.”
While these detours are insightful, they slow the narrative momentum and make proceedings more gripping than suspenseful. Patience pays off, though, because when Atkinson thickens her plot, she raises the stakes and ramps up the intrigue. After fighting through the smoke and mirrors, the twists and turns, we’re propelled to a denouement that’s both absurd and gripping, with a corpse in a pantry and a killer on the run.
The glue that holds everything together is Brodie. On this occasion, we see little of his Russian girlfriend, the “proven dominatrix and suspected murderer” Tatiana, and he spends no time brooding over his family worries. Instead, he throws himself into his investigation, charming us with his sharp wit, his pithy one-liners (“a coincidence is just an explanation waiting to be given”) and his scathing retorts. “If it were real,” he says of the actors’ performance, “I would have arrested them all for bringing murder into disrepute.”
This novel finds Atkinson at her most playful. She impresses with her tightly constructed, satisfyingly complex crime story peppered with references to Agatha Christie, and her observations of modern life and human nature. But she’s at her best when the spotlight is on her protagonist. Brodie may have “fallen on the wrong side of sixty,” but he’s still a force to be reckoned with and a compelling presence on the page.
DEATH IN THE SIGN OF THE TOWER
By Kate Atkinson
Doubleday, 320 pages, $30
Malcolm Forbes has written for The Economist, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. He lives in Edinburgh.
