Starred Review This is the fourth entry in Atkinson’s brilliant series featuring semi-retired detective Jackson Brodie. Feeling his age, Jackson is touring the ruined abbeys of northern England, a sucker for great landscapes and the poetry of Emily Dickinson (from which the novel’s title is taken). He’s also trying to track down the biological parents of a woman who was adopted as a child. How that case intersects with a series of crimes committed in Leeds in the 1970s is just one of the many strands Atkinson seamlessly weaves together in a plot driven by coincidence and a diamond-hard recognition of man’s darker nature. Meanwhile, lonely retired police detective Tracy Waterhouse, whose years on the force have left her “with a shell so thick there was hardly any room left inside,” witnesses a prostitute abusing a child and, in a moment of madness, offers her cash for the kid. Her odyssey as a new parent to a waif dressed in a ragged fairy costume, relayed with both tenderness and wry wit, must be one of the grandest love affairs in crime fiction, and it leads her, as all roads in Atkinson’s world do, straight to Jackson’s door. For its singular melding of radiant humor and dark deeds, this is must-reading for literary crime-fiction fans. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Atkinson’s new novel sees the return of soulful detective Jackson Brodie; the previous three entries in the series have, together, sold more than 525,000 copies. --Joanne Wilkinson
Review
"Crime has given Atkinson the freedom to write an ambitious, panoramic work, full of excitement, colour and compassion." _— The Sunday Times (UK) _ "An irrepressible exuberance shines throughout. . . . Folds past and present together with Atkinson's customary flair. . . . Extraordinary combination of wit, plain-speaking, tenderness and control." — The Guardian (UK)
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Starred Review This is the fourth entry in Atkinson’s brilliant series featuring semi-retired detective Jackson Brodie. Feeling his age, Jackson is touring the ruined abbeys of northern England, a sucker for great landscapes and the poetry of Emily Dickinson (from which the novel’s title is taken). He’s also trying to track down the biological parents of a woman who was adopted as a child. How that case intersects with a series of crimes committed in Leeds in the 1970s is just one of the many strands Atkinson seamlessly weaves together in a plot driven by coincidence and a diamond-hard recognition of man’s darker nature. Meanwhile, lonely retired police detective Tracy Waterhouse, whose years on the force have left her “with a shell so thick there was hardly any room left inside,” witnesses a prostitute abusing a child and, in a moment of madness, offers her cash for the kid. Her odyssey as a new parent to a waif dressed in a ragged fairy costume, relayed with both tenderness and wry wit, must be one of the grandest love affairs in crime fiction, and it leads her, as all roads in Atkinson’s world do, straight to Jackson’s door. For its singular melding of radiant humor and dark deeds, this is must-reading for literary crime-fiction fans. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Atkinson’s new novel sees the return of soulful detective Jackson Brodie; the previous three entries in the series have, together, sold more than 525,000 copies. --Joanne Wilkinson
Review
"Crime has given Atkinson the freedom to write an ambitious, panoramic work, full of excitement, colour and compassion."
_— The Sunday Times (UK)
_
"An irrepressible exuberance shines throughout. . . . Folds past and present together with Atkinson's customary flair. . . . Extraordinary combination of wit, plain-speaking, tenderness and control."
— The Guardian (UK)