Private investigator Jackson Brodie returns for the fifth time in Kate Atkinson’s Big Sky (2019), which once again leverages, to enjoyable seriocomic effect, the axiom “a coincidence is just an explanation waiting to happen.” While at times this cheeky catchphrase reads like justification for contrived plotting, you’ve got to hand it to the author: it has served her well as a springboard for entertaining tapestries of intricate mystery.
The playing field moves to England’s east coast, where Brodie has landed and continues working as a PI, in an operation to track down a potential catfisher. As it happens, numerous figures in Brodie’s life are also nearby: his ex-wife Julia is filming episodes of her cop show Collier, and he’s occasionally spending time with his son Nathan. There’s also Reggie Chase, the young woman from Scotland who saved Brodie’s life in When Will There Be Good News?, now a police inspector. With her partner Ronnie, Reggie is on special assignment to track down an elusive conspirator in a long-ago sex crimes ring that once scandalized the region. As it happens, similar crimes are still ongoing, and the key to unlocking them may be a hapless loser named Vince Ives, whose sad life has brought him into the orbit of a heinous modern slavery racket.
Released not long after the MeToo hashtag took off in earnest, Big Sky is another welcome visit with the middle-aged, unprepossessing Brodie, a familiar face easing the reader into a sordid underworld of criminal exploitation. Structurally, this one doesn’t break new ground in the series, but Atkinson imbues the usual wild web of unlikely connections with a strong theme, treating it with both her customary humor and the seriousness it deserves. It took a novel or two for me to embrace the rhythms of Atkinson’s rambling wit, but now that I’m at home with it, I’m fully hooked.
Private investigator Jackson Brodie returns for the fifth time in Kate Atkinson’s Big Sky (2019), which once again leverages, to enjoyable seriocomic effect, the axiom “a coincidence is just an explanation waiting to happen.” While at times this cheeky catchphrase reads like justification for contrived plotting, you’ve got to hand it to the author: it has served her well as a springboard for entertaining tapestries of intricate mystery.
