2004 mystery, first in a series. In 1970 a small child goes missing
while camping in the garden with her sister. In 1994 a young woman is
murdered in her father's office. In 1979 a new mother is found
clutching an axe next to her husband's body: "He woke the baby". And
in the modern day former copper turned PI Jackson Brodie investigates.
I've talked before about writers who give the impression of
wanting to write a literary novel, but people will pay for mystery, so
they dress it up in mystery's clothing—which generally isn't very
satisfying to me as a mystery fan.
But this one does it, possibly because Atkinson doesn't feel as though
she's chafing at the requirements of the mystery, even though several
of the rules are broken: none of what happened is ever made public,
there will be no prosecutions, and structurally law and order is not
seen to triumph. And yet… the people who have been suffering from not
knowing what happened are finally able to move on, with more or less
remnant scarring.
And some of the rules of the private eye are followed: Jackson's
gone through an ugly divorce, he smokes too much, he's carrying demons
of his own. He is, in fact, not a particularly heroic man, but he's
the best the victims have got and someone has to do the job.
Yes, all right, there are multiple viewpoints and Atkinson starts with
several chapters of gloomy literary backstory before we even meet
Jackson. Sometimes time overlaps, with viewpoint B coming in to
recapitulate the events seen from viewpoint A in the previous chapter.
But there's enough detection, and most of the answers are revealed to
the reader if not to the world, so that my mystery-reading mind was
satisfied and didn't detract from my enjoyment of the rest.
It's a very self-aware book but all the same a very enjoyable one. And
the writing is always pleasing.
The room was like something a psychopath might have kept, not any
psychopath Jackson had ever come across, of course, but the
psychopaths who inhabited crime novels and television programmes.
Jackson thought they should make more television drama about car
crime committed by fourteen-year-old boys high on glue and cider and
boredom. It would be a lot more realistic, just not very
interesting.