Started Early, Took My Dog
Kate Atkinson
Crime can pay. It certainly has for Atkinson.
The British writer’s first book, Behind The Scenes At The Museum, which delved into the family history of a middle-class Englishwoman, won her the 1995 Whitbread Book Of The Year. But it seems that she has found her true calling with detective novels, beginning with Case Histories in 2004.
Her speciality is in charmingly flawed characters who are all too real in their foibles and yet retain a deep sense of morality.
There is ex-detective Tracy Waterhouse who indulges in food to fill the emptiness. Over the years, she has attended more funerals than weddings: “Murder victims mostly. Never been to a christening. Said something about your life, didn’t it?”
Then there is Jackson Brodie, cop-turned-private detective: “It used to be that his bark was worse than his bite, now it was the other way round.”
He is snooping around on behalf of a client trying to find her birth parents.
For Tracy and Jackson, their central core of goodness sees them taking on unexpected responsibilities one fateful day.
A third key character is Tilly, an elderly actress beginning to lose her grip on reality.
Add to the mix an old murder case which continues to cast a sinister pall over events unfolding in the present.
Atkinson has framed the novel thus: The paths of all three criss-cross at the beginning of the book and again at the end. Even though they seem set on a collision course after the first momentous meetings, it is safe to say that you would not be able to see the turns the story would need to take in order for that to happen.
In contrast to the late Stieg Larsson’s exhaustively detailed plot-boilers, Atkinson’s novels use plot as a device to get under the skin of superbly drawn characters who are at once tough and vulnerable.
The ending is a teaser which indicates that Atkinson is not quite done with Jackson or Tracy just yet. Which is great news for readers since they will not be either by the time they finish the book.
If you like this, read: Case Histories by Kate Atkinson (2005, $15.27, Bookdepository.co.uk). In his first outing, investigator Jackson Brodie joins the dots among three apparently unrelated tragedies.
(ST)