Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson

"Boys will be boys," he heard Kitty Winfield murmur as the two women walked away.

Men didn't deserve women.

"We don't deserve them," he said to Ian Winfield as they rolled their way to the bar.

"Oh God no," he said. "They're far superior to us. Wouldn't want to be one, though."

-Started Early, Took My Dog 

So, first off, the big news is this:

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Jackson Brodie, as portrayed by Jason Isaacs in the new BBC adaptation of Case Histories. I must say, my imagination has done me a great disservice in never conjuring up Jason Isaacs as Jackson prior to now, because it's pretty brilliant casting. Here's the trailer, in case you might need to watch it a million times before the show airs on PBS (starting October 16th!).  (The Johnny Cash is a great detail. Jackson would approve).

So I read Started Early, Took My Dog with that casting in mind, which was just the cherry on top of another wonderful book by Kate Atkinson. In this latest installment, Jackson has left Edinburgh for his old stomping ground of Yorkshire. He's attempting to trace the origins of a client in New Zealand whose birth and subsequent adoption, some thirty-odd years earlier, were accompanied by a telling lack of legitimate documentation. Atkinson also weaves in the story of Tracy Waterhouse, a retired police superintendent who makes a very rash decision in a mall parking lot and whose experience as a rookie in a murder case in 1975 may tie her to Jackson's client. Atkinson jumps back and forth and time to tell these stories as well as to explore the 1975 case and the corruption in the Yorkshire police department at that time that caused so much unnecessary heartache.

Atkinson is brilliant. I really don't know what else to say. I can't imagine having the talent to bring these stories together; it seems like magic to me. When I was looking over my review of When Will There Be Good News?, I noted that at that point I considered it to be my favorite in the series, but its position may have just been usurped. I think I'd like to go back and read from the beginning again, actually, because at this point I've lost track of some things about Jackson (forgot he was from Yorkshire, for one) and just because it is an excellent set of stories. I loved Tracy, and I relished contemplating the moral quandary that came of her actions--always nice when a book makes you think, isn't it? I did miss Louise, though, and I am hoping she'll be back in a future book.Whatever turn Jackson's life takes next, I'm looking forward to reading about it.

Up next: Back to Little Dorrit, which finally seems to be picking up the pace a bit.

When Will There Be Good News?

Louise was an urbanite, she preferred the gut-thrilling sound of an emergency siren slicing through the night to the noise of country birds at dawn. Pub brawls, rackety roadworks, mugged tourists, the badlands on a Saturday night - they all made sense, they were all part of the huge, dirty, torn social fabric. There was a war raging out there in the city and she was part of the fight, but the countryside unsettled her because she didn't know who the enemy was. She had always preferred North and South to Wuthering Heights. All that demented running around the moors, identifying yourself with the scenery, not a good role model for a woman.

-When Will There Be Good News?

When was the last time you read the word "rackety," excepting the paragraph above? I'm not sure if I ever have. Such a delicious word, too - one of the many, many things on the long, long list of things I love about Kate Atkinson's writing. (The praise of North and South at the expense of Wuthering Heights also makes the list, naturally.)

When Will There Be Good News? picks up some time after the events of Atkinson's previous novel, One Good Turn, and also features former private detective Jackson Brodie and Detective Chief Inspector Louise Monroe. Like Atkinson's two prior mysteries (Case Histories was the first in which Jackson figured), When Will There Be Good News? is set in Edinburgh and told through the use of intertwining narratives: in this case, those of Jackson and Louise, as well as that of newcomer Reggie Chase. Reggie is a 16-year-old girl who could have easily slipped through the cracks. Instead, she's found work as a "mother's help" for a high-powered doctor and looks upon the doctor and her baby as a surrogate family. Perhaps that's why Reggie can't rest when the doctor vanishes and no one, not even the doctor's husband, seems to be worried. Of course, Reggie doesn't know that the doctor survived a brutal childhood tragedy that shattered her family, and that the man responsible has just been released from prison...

Reggie's hunt for the missing (...or is she?) doctor leads her to Louise, who's preoccupied with a domestic violence case as well as her misgivings about her own marriage; Reggie finds Jackson after a horrific train crash*. Atkinson manages to weave all of the stories together quite expertly. It's just a brilliantly constructed book, and I'm awed by the way Atkinson created three characters so well realized and orchestrated their interactions so beautifully. Jackson, Louise, and Reggie are all extremely tough - they'd have to be, to deal with the events of this book as well as to survive what we know of their lives before this point. They also seem so vulnerable, though, because Atkinson allows us to know them so intimately. It's very impressive. I basically want to be her when I grow up.

Also, I just love love love Reggie Chase, in case that wasn't clear. She's a wonderful heroine, scrappy and tenacious, and I was in her corner from the get-go. That reminds me: I need to see an adaptation of this on PBS's Mystery!, like, yesterday. They can start with Case Histories, but I think this is actually my favorite of the series so far - that's pretty exciting, when you think about it.

Up next: One Step Behind by Henning Mankell. It's part of the Wallander series, which I do not seem to be reading in any particular order (this book is set several years after the last one I read, but there were several in between). I actually did see an adaptation of this on Mystery!, but I seem to have done a good enough job of forgetting the particulars so as to be quite puzzled by the case - which is good, I guess, for entertainment purposes, though it doesn't speak too well of my memory.

*I find it strange how patterns can crop up in books one reads. For example, this is the second book I've read recently to deal with the aftermath of a train crash (Drood also had one). When I read American Wife and Admission back to back, I noticed that both mentioned the Princeton P-rade, something I had been entirely ignorant of before. Funny.

I Want To Read: When Will There Be Good News?

This is Kate Atkinson. She is awesome.

Well, I don't know her per se, so perhaps I should qualify that her writing is awesome. Her most recent book, When Will There Be Good News?, was released last year. The only reason that it's not already in my hot little hands is because I am trying to preserve some modicum of fiscal responsibility. (It's not in American paperback until January 2010).

When Will There Be Good News? is Atkinson's latest mystery featuring the Scottish detective Jackson Brodie. I picked up the first, Case Histories, based on strong reviews and the intriguing title. (Atkinson has a way with titles: I like Behind the Scenes at the Museum and Emotionally Weird).

It was a good pick. Great, really. The thing with Atkinson is that she infuses well-crafted mysteries with language that is associated with literature, as opposed to (heaven forbid) genre fiction. It's not uncommon to find a mystery writer who can navigate a tricky plot but who doesn't rise above mediocrity on a sentence by sentence basis. And of course there are many, often more well-respected writers who can write beautiful stories in which very little seems to actually happen. Atkinson fuses the best of the two. Her stories are ambitious, complicated, sometimes messy, but absolutely enjoyable.

It's the reason I haven't just checked the book out from the library. I'm convinced that once I've read it, I'll want to hold on to it. It's nice to have that level of trust in an author. It doesn't always work out of course (see: The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell). Also, of course, I don't feel that I can go to the library when I have a pile of unread books sitting in my apartment. Oh, the troubles of a reader.