Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson: A review

When I read that Kate Atkinson had released another book featuring former police detective and now private detective Jackson Brodie, I put my reading list aside and picked it up. I never miss a chance to spend time in the company of Brodie.

This entry is, it seems to me, an homage to Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None which I read long, long ago and which, along with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd engendered and confirmed my love of mysteries. 

Atkinson takes us to Rook Hall, the east wing of one of England's stately homes called Burton Makepeace where a "Murder Mystery Weekend" is being hosted by the cash-strapped owners of the home as a way of raising money. For only £1250 per person, the guests which include a vicar who has lost his faith and his ability to speak, an army major who lost a leg and his interest in life, a countess, and the Dowager Lady Milton as hostess will have the opportunity to solve a murder mystery. 

But then a real mystery intervenes when a convicted murderer on the run is thought to be hiding somewhere in Burton Makepeace's surrounding moors.

To further complicate matters, Jackson Brodie shows up along with DC Reggie Chase. They are there because of the theft of some paintings including a rather valuable one by J.M.W. Turner. The suspect is the housekeeper, Sophie, who has now gone missing. 

Moreover, there was another recent art theft from the home of a recently deceased widow, a Renaissance painting titled "The Woman with the Weasel." The suspect there was the widow's caregiver named Melanie. Are Melanie and Sophie actually the same person?

So all the plot elements are set for a typical Christie-like mystery, but wait! There's more! There's humor and quite a lot of it, actually. Much of the humor comes from Brodie's internal dialogs and philosophical musings with himself.

The plot was fairly intricate and engaged the little gray cells (as Poirot would say) in trying to sort it out. The result was a highly entertaining read that made me a bit sad to turn that last page.

 
 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Poetry Sunday: Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver

How about we share another Mary Oliver poem? After all, you can never have too many of those. In this one, the poet seems to acknowledge that it is often hard to simply live in and enjoy the moment, perhaps because we are afraid it can't last. She urges us to give in to that moment and fully experience the joy. Although "much can never be redeemed, still, life has some possibility left." Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is no
Read more

Overboard by Sara Paretsky: A review

Image
  This is the twenty-first novel in the V.I. Warshawski series that Sara Paretsky first began publishing in 1982 with Indemnity Only . I've read them all. I've been a Warshawski fan since the beginning.  So for forty years, Paretsky has been writing these books and I've been reading them. And one thing that I have enjoyed about them is that V.I. has aged through them, if not exactly forty years then at least enough to simulate reality. In this latest book, V.I. may be feeling the weight of those years a bit but her passion for justice is undiminished.  As often in her cases, a teenager is involved. V.I., the hardboiled detective, has a certifiable soft spot for teenagers. This time it is a teenage girl who V.I.'s dog Mitch finds when they are on a walk around Lake Michigan. The girl is injured and unconscious and has only a faint pulse when V.I. checks her. She calls an ambulance and the girl is taken to the hospital after uttering only one word which seems to make no s
Read more

The Investigator by John Sandford: A review

Image
  I have read a few of John Sandford's books in the Prey series featuring Lucas Davenport. This book is a literal offspring of that series. It's the first in a series featuring Davenport's adopted daughter Letty Davenport. Letty is in her mid-20s and a graduate of Stanford. She works for a U.S. senator named Christopher Colles in a desk job but she's bored with her assignments. Then the senator offers her a chance to go into the field as a liaison between his office and the Department of Homeland Security.  In her first assignment in that position, she is sent to Texas along with DHS investigator John Kaiser to try to find out what is happening in regard to thefts of crude oil. The senator is not so concerned about the lost oil but wants to know where the money from its sale is going. Who is selling the oil and what they are doing with the profits? The suspicion is that a particularly nasty militia group led by a woman is involved. Letty and Kaiser head out to Texas, de
Read more