There’s Tracy Waterhouse, a middle-aged Leeds mall rent-a-cop who buys a toddler from a drug-addled prostitute. And here are characters as vivid as any she’s ever minted. Somehow, she manages to keep three distinct plot lines going at once without ever getting tangled up or diminishing the novel’s momentum. This has less to do with any effort on the author’s part to sell out than it does with her growing mastery over her material (Atkinson, 59, was a late bloomer, publishing her first novel when she was 43). Without sacrificing any of the playful complexity that marks her previous work, the new novel manages to be more accessible, more immediately engaging. You could almost say she’s too good for her own good.
And that, more than anything, may explain why, despite a raft of critical praise and a shelf of awards (she won England’s Whitbread Prize for her very first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum), she has never been a regular on the best seller lists. In scope and purpose, they are much more daring than any run of the mill murder mystery or thriller.
And the last four, including the just released Started Early, Took My Dog, have all featured Jackson Brodie, ex-cop turned private sleuth, And yet, none of these stories could easily be described as a whodunit or in any way action packed. There are indeed mysteries in her seven extraordinary novels. But I suspect we might never find out (we don't in Big Sky).She has a point. I wonder whether Tracy will ever wake up, admit it to herself, and stop hiding from it. So somebody out there is looking for her. At the very end Brodie remembers the birthmark but doesn't realize why that's floating around in his brain, even though he recalls seeing it recently - there's no mention of him seeing it on Courtney's arm, but I suspect he might have, subconsciously. We know Courtney has such a birthmark because when Tracy gives her a bath she sees it and ponders whether it would be easy to remove. But remember Brodie's South African buddy Mitch? The one who started an agency for finding missing children after his own son was abducted? At some point (before he meets Tracy & Courtney on the road) Brodie recalls paging through Mitch's dossier of missing children and there's a child with a birthmark in the shape of Africa on a forearm. But remember Brodie's South African buddy Mitch? The one who started an agency for finding missing children after his own son was ab …more We're never told.
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