Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie series
After having read the first three novels in Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie series—Case Histories, One Good Turn, and When Will There Be Good News?—I decided to take a break and write about them before returning to read the next three. I read Atkinson’s Life After Life (which also has a sequel) years ago and marveled at her story-telling abilities, which also shine throughout this series.
Brodie is an ex-soldier private eye who works on cases for hire. In the first he is hired by two sisters who are desperate to discover anything about how their baby sister died 20 years ago, in the second he is witness to a fender-bender-turned-almost-murder that he actually tries not to solve, and in the third, he claims retirement but ends up being hired to find out the whereabouts of a missing doctor who herself was the witness of the murder of her mother and two siblings when she was a child. Somehow, always impossibly, Atkinson manages to link all of the characters in each novel, the main ones, the side ones, and especially Brodie, with everything culminating in the last 50 pages. It is an impressive feat that leaves the reader (well, me at least) both smugly satisfied at, and slightly in awe of, Atkinson’s ability to connect every last dot.
Besides the recommendation of Life After Life, I also read an interesting piece about the character of development of Brodie himself (wish I could link here, but alas, it is lost forever) that convinced me to go out and get all six novels. Sometimes he is the typical male in that he analyzes every woman based on their looks, but at others you can see how his development will be possible, as he is very aware of what he calls all the “missing girls,” the very thought of which bothers him on a daily basis. Which is more than we can say of most men, although said character development is yet to be seen!