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CASE HISTORIES, in which Jackson Brodie made his first appearance, appeared twenty years ago. It was followed every two years by three further installments, and then Brodie disappeared for nine years. Not that Atkinson had abandoned writing - she produced some extraordinary work in those years – but it seemed that Brodie had been left behind. Then came BIG SKY in 2019 and the return of the detective. When I looked back on my review of that book, I found this:
"Atkinson says that she is working on another Brodie, this one to be 'a very funny book: an Agatha Christie homage.' Since she says she's already written the ending, let's hope it appears very soon. Atkinson says the current world is "a darker place and it is an angrier place and it is a more bitter place" than it was when Brodie first appeared."
That installment has finally appeared, five years on. It is indeed a very funny book and one in which the darker and angrier aspects of the times are not overlooked, but it is in no way bitter. Brodie has aged appropriately since his last appearance. He is a private investigator, but less in demand than in earlier years. We see him at work interviewing Ian and Hazel, elderly twins, who are missing a painting that used to hang in their newly-inherited house. A housekeeper has disappeared, presumably along with the picture, and they want it back, "for sentimental reasons." Brodie is dubious about the pair, but goes ahead. Soon there will be a similar case for him, but enlarged. Everything is bigger – the picture, the house, this time a stately home fallen on hard times whose family is desperately trying to monetise its similarities with fictional grand houses like Downton Abbey to cover expenses. They have already sold off most of their art and now the Turner that remained has disappeared as has Sophie, the housekeeper.
The cast of characters is modelled on a Christie-like locked-mansion kind of plot; there is even a blizzard. But certain of the characters are fully developed, and although they have their roots in the Golden Age mysteries of the inter-war period, they are far more complex and compelling than their forbears. There is Simon Cate, Vicar of the parish, who lost his faith years ago and loses his voice in the course of the action. He is doing his best to perform in his role, and even his bishop consoles him, saying faith or no faith, it hardly matters. But it does matter to Simon, "whose rural parishes were very small and very white and when the last of their worshippers died he supposed there would be no more church attendees. He felt as though he were overseeing the final death throes of Christianity. Someone had to, it may as well be him."
Another staple character is ex-Army officer Ben Jennings, a major who lost his leg in Afghanistan. He had almost died, wounded while leading a patrol. His parents are of the stiff- upper-lip variety and refuse to acknowledge Ben has suffered a serious loss, but Ben is wholly changed: an "unnamed dread stalked both his waking and sleeping hours." And then there is Lady Milton, mistress of Burton Makepeace House and repository of traditional upper class habits that are embedded in nineteenth century fiction that Lady Milton has heard of but never read. It is an additional sadness to learn that Maggie Smith has passed away before she could play the part. But of course Lady Milton would not have approved. She detests Downton Abbey: "such a painful reminder of one's family's glory days. And hopelessly inaccurate, of course."
Lady Milton is not altogether wrong about the television abbey and the generations that follow her in Burton Makepeace House are inadequate to the challenge of their inheritance. They are, however, singularly incapable of walking away from it as well. This is not to say that Atkinson is grieving the loss of unexamined class privilege. She is merely taking a long, hard, and comic look at where it stands at the moment.
§ Yvonne Klein is a writer, translator, and retired college English professor who lives in Montreal. She's been editing RTE since 2008.
Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, September 2024
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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