There is no stray anything in “Big Sky.” That’s one big reason Atkinson’s devotees love her. It’s just a matter of time before she catalyzes Brodie, Reggie and the others to start tearing the scab off this thing. We don’t know who he is or what he has to do with the rest of the story, but we know that human trafficking lies somewhere beneath the polite socializing with which Atkinson pairs it. Then there’s the early scene that establishes the plot: a scammy “businessman” who cons foreign women into coming to Yorkshire, where the book is set.
The other women in this circle tend to get very quiet when thinking about this. As she introduces a crew of old buddies who gravitate toward the posh Belvedere Golf Club, she opens up a whole world of awful marriages, alarming betrayals and, in the case of the richest member of the group, a first wife who accidentally fell off a cliff before a second, trophy wife could be acquired. This book has a lot of drastic scene changes, is packed with minor characters and is in no hurry to get where it’s going.īut somehow Atkinson never seems to be treading water. Atkinson has said that she loves Netflix, attributes the same feeling to Brodie, and has had a previous Brodie book, “Case Histories,” adapted for PBS. In “Big Sky,” he’s working a routine infidelity case on behalf of a suspicious wife (whose husband, it is discovered, has “indulged in bridled passion” with his girlfriend) when he stumbles onto something awful enough to subvert that little girl’s princess/unicorn fantasyland.Īs Atkinson recently told The Guardian, “Big Sky” began as a screenplay with a female lead. And her new book’s plot is crowded in its own right, which means that “Big Sky” - the first Brodie novel since 2010 - begins as a leisurely panorama of new characters, favorite old ones (like Reggie Chase, the teenage nanny and amateur sleuth from “When Will There Be Good News?,” now a full-fledged detective), vividly contrasting new settings (a bawdy nightclub, a snobbish golf course) and, finally, Brodie himself.īy some strange alchemy, Jackson Brodie is both the heart of these books and the least interesting character in them. So Atkinson has a lot of bread crumbs to toss around. That’s because Brodie’s past is by now very complicated. in all the Brodie books, but it’s never worked better than it does in “Big Sky.”
Atkinson sneaks this into “Big Sky” so casually that it doesn’t resonate until exactly when the author wants it to. Her mother wants her to grow up in a fairy tale, the kind where toy unicorns belong. There’s a spoiled little girl in “Big Sky,” the long-overdue fifth book in Kate Atkinson’s irresistible Jackson Brodie private eye series, who has a closet full of princess costumes.
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