March 2021 review:Jackson Brodie Book 4: In West Yorkshire, across the same towns and cities the Yorkshire Ripper terrorised, our non-hero Jackson Brodie is searching for two people, his ex-wife who fleeced him, and the origins of an adopted New Zealander seeking her real parents story. Along the way we get in the heads of a likeable child kidnapper (I kid you not), an elderly thespian living in the past, a police chief who can't forget or forgive the past, and a social worker connected to all

Always a joy to return to Kate Atkinson's brand of offbeat literary crime fiction, the in depth case studies of complex characters and their interior lives, of past tragedies and murder, the repercussions and the weaving of coincidences and connections into the narrative set here in Leeds and Whitby in Yorkshire. The retired police officer, Tracy Waterhouse, lives a quiet ordinary life of routines, and working security in a mall. Upon seeing a child being abused by a known offender, the courageo...

5★“He supposed he would end up having to put himself down. He planned to go out on the ice (I may be some time), lie down with a bottle of something as old as himself and drift off into the big sleep. He hoped global warming didn’t scupper this plan.”Black thoughts, funny, human, but pretty much what you might expect from a lonely Yorkshire man “a West Riding man himself, made from soot and rugby league and beef dripping. . . ” who’s ended up on his own somehow, with an ex-wife and teenaged daug...

The last time I read this I gave it 4 stars. I am upping it to five. I think reading the series straight through, instead of having gaps of years between books, has made it more familiar and I am more involved in the characters and their lives.I know some readers do not like Atkinson's style and I can understand why. Each of her books begins the same way - jumping all over the place and introducing heaps of characters each of them with a detailed back story. I love it although I always read her

Another Kate Atkinson arrived at our library, and lived up to my sky-high expectations. Here's the thing: if you want everything tied up in a neat package: no. If you want a linear narrative: no. "Easy read": no. But if you love interesting, complex characters, complex stories and delightful writing: yes. Part-time private-eye and semi-successful womanizer Jackson Brodie, and cranky retired cop Tracy Waterhouse are the centerpieces of this book. Jackson spends the book confused, chasing several

I regret to say it, but I didn't like this book as much as the three previous Jackson Brodie novels. The writing felt looser, not as polished. There was lots of rambling and POV-switching, which sometimes made it hard to keep up with what was going on. I also disliked the characters reminiscing so much, as the narrative would skip between the past and the present without always signposting it. And how annoying were all those descriptions of Jackson "tapping in" an email on his phone to Hope McMa...

My friend Jemidar and I put off reading this, the fourth of Kate Atkinson’s novels featuring former police officer and former private detective Jackson Brodie, because we heard it ended in a cliffhanger. We don’t like hanging from cliffs and thought we’d wait until the next Jackson Brodie novel was published before putting ourselves in that situation. Turns out that Atkinson is not planning to write any more books in the series in the foreseeable future, so we decided to delay no longer. As it h...

I'm sure there was a good detective novel trying to emerge from this morass, somewhere...But it was hidden between too many unnecessary characters, too many unfinished tales, too many completely pointless streams of consciousness, too many attempts at being a South American "magic" novel of the 1970's/ 1980's, too much cataloguing of "nasty murders that happened up north", and too many ridiculous coincidences - just too much fog and unfinished waffle in general.Cut it down by 100 pages or so and...

I don't think it's possible for me to love Kate Atkinson books more than I do. I want to go to Edinburgh and hang out with her (and when I said this on Twitter, some inn owner in that lovely,gloomy city said I should stop on by; they have a shelf full of Atkinson books in their cottage!). Anyway, this is Atkinson's fourth Jackson Brodie mystery, and I read this book as I was also watching the PBS Masterpiece Mystery series, Case Histories,in which a very watchable Jason Isaacs brings Brodie to l...

“Fiction had never been Jackson's thing. Facts seemed challenging enough without making stuff up. What he discovered was that the great novels of the world were about three things - death, money and sex. Occasionally a whale.” I can’t believe it's the last in the installmentUtterly stunning, totally beautiful, I love this series so much and I cannot believe it’s over at least I hope Kate Atkinson is writing another installment... “He wondered what a visitor from th

Definitely my least favorite Jackson Brodie novel.I've seen others rate this book very highly, and to each their own -- but I thought it pretty much sucked. I usually like Atkinson's typical method of having multiple storylines going on at once, and true to form, they did manage to blend together about 3/4 of the way through the book ... but I got extremely irritated with all of the pointless internal dialogue that did nothing to contribute to the story. Having multiple characters is only good i...

I liked this book. I like Kate Atkinson. I like how characters are introduced slowly, and I don't always know instantly whose point of view I'm reading. Sometimes, I recognize connections between characters in the later books and characters or actions happening in current books. And I like how some mysteries are left unsolved at the end of the book.I am starting to have difficulties with Jackson Brodie. I can believe in improbable things happening....a little bit of chaos theory in action. That'...

I think every intelligent, fiction-loving person should read Kate Atkinson's excellent books. Just follow me. Like this. This is book #4 for investigator Jackson Brodie, so you really shouldn't start the series here. That said, Jackson, as ever, is a man whose head is improbably full of women's voices. Mostly voices of his exes, who ironically judge, sass, and mock him as always. It's a chorus I've always enjoyed.Someone's got to keep him in line.But it's still something of a relief tha...

As elegant as a Bach fugue and wise and fun at the same time. The lives of three strangers intersect briefly in Leeds in Yorkshire and then wander down separate but converging trajectories as tragic events from their lives 35 years ago drive propel them on paths of attempted resolution of their losses. The three main characters are a retired woman cop working in mall security, an elderly actress with growing dementia, and a detective looking for the birth mother of a woman in New Zealand. Luckil...