As the novel slips back and forth between 1975 and the present, we enter a time warp of attitudes. These characters make spilt-second decisions that haunt them for a lifetime, and this leads to crimes or sometimes serious errors in judgment. This is not primarily a crime novel–although the action is built around several crimes instead this is a superbly built story of several characters whose lives are shaped by crime. The novel goes back and forth between 1975 Yorkshire “ awash with serial killers” and the present, and several threads regarding lost girls (kidnapped, missing, murdered) run throughout this simply marvellous story. Clues lead to Tracy and an old murder case from 1975. She’s also about to run into Jackson Brodie who’s been employed by an adopted girl in New Zealand to find her real parents. Tracy, who has never married, becomes mixed up with the fate of a badly neglected child, and this sends her life into a tailspin. Tracy, bored to tears in retirement, is now Head of Security at a local shopping centre. Instead here’s the novel in brief: the two main characters are “ butch old battlexe” Tracy Waterhouse, in her 50s, a retired Detective Superintendent from the West Yorkshire Police Dept and PI Jackson Brodie. This means I have some catch-up to do because after reading this one, I know I want to read all the earlier novels. It’s the fourth novel by Atkinson to feature PI Jackson Brodie, and in my typical fashion, I am only now just getting to this author. High praise goes to Kate Atkinson’s novel, Started Early Took My Dog.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |