Kate Atkinson published a new book this year, A God in Ruins. The world was raving about it, and about her earlier works, and I was embarrassed that I hadn’t heard of her. I got curious, did a little research, and found somewhere that Atkinson is one of Stephen King’s favorite authors. He particularly recommended the Jackson Brodie books. I decided I wanted to read all of her books, and figured I’d best start with the first one.
Case one: a little girl goes missing in 1970 when she was sleeping in a tent in the backyard with one of her sisters. Case two: a young woman is murdered in her father’s office in 1994. Case three: in 1979, a young husband is brutally murdered with his daughter in the room. Years later, Jackson Brodie (private detective, ex-cop, ex-husband, part-time father) has been hired to look into each of the crimes.
The reason why he’s asked to look into the first one is because the girl’s father has died and her remaining sisters find something when cleaning up dad’s house. The second case comes about because dad’s life stopped the day his daughter died. The third case circles around all of the other stories.
The book is told from the point of view of Jackson Brodie as well as several of the people involved in the earlier crimes. Each of the stories was engrossing, and the way they were each tied together was excellent. I will definitely be reading more Brodie stories in the future.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.