Big Sky by Kate Atkinson
Big Sky is Kate Atkinson's fifth Jackson Brodie private detective novel, and if you haven't read the first four I'd recommend heading there first (Case Histories from 2004 is the start of the series). Partly because they're good books so why not, partly because characters from the past turn up in Big Sky and while I don't think a Brodie novice would be totally flummoxed, there's definitely deeper satisfaction to be gained if you've been there before.
If you are new to Jackson Brodie, don't expect much sleuthing. He is, if not quite the world's most feckless detective, at least the luckiest. He doesn't so much go out and find answers as stumble across an answer while he's looking for something completely different, and possibly even fail to recognise it as an answer for a while. My dad and I both read this in the same week — he got it out of the library ebook system after I mentioned I'd finally got round to buying it — and I wondered aloud if Brodie did any proper detecting at all in this one. My dad leapt to his defence and pointed out one thread that counted as such, but still, even by Jackson Brodie standards he's something of a bystander in this story.
The novel makes for grim reading. And yet with Kate Atkinson's usual lightness of touch and wry humour I found myself smiling more than I would have imagined, given the subject matter. There's a tangle of historic child abuse cases, present-day grooming on the internet, and people-trafficking. All set in Yorkshire, mostly at the coast. The cast of characters is varied and nuanced (and tellingly detailed), and it's not always easy to pick out the good guys and the bad guys. As ever with Jackson Brodie novels, coincidences and connections abound — if you're new to the series, be prepared for pretty much anything that could be connected to be connected.
In the background of all this is Jackson's feelings as a father having had a fall-out with his grown up daughter, and currently in charge of his adolescent son. How the world has changed, how old he feels, how nostalgic. And how some things don't change. He's suffused with as much melancholy as you'd expect from a middle-aged divorced man who's a fan of female country singers, but overall the book has an air of hope. Well worth a read, which I guess you'd expect me to say since I'm such a big fan of Kate Atkinson but start at Case Histories and you will be too.
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