Guest review by David Breakell: DEATH AT THE SIGN OF THE ROOK by Kate Atkinson

 

"Only a writer of Atkinson's skill could pull this off without straining credibility to breaking point."

David Breakell, formerly a practising lawyer in the City of London, writes historical fiction. His novel The Alchemist of Genoa was published in March this year - find out more on his website.

Great fictional detectives have dysfunctional personal lives. Or at least that's how it seems: Sherlock Holmes, Philip Marlowe, Inspector Laidlaw - just add your favourites to the list. And Kate Atkinson's sardonic ex-cop turned private eye, Jackson Brodie, is a great detective. Not 'great' for his brilliant deductive reasoning or his observational powers, or even that he (usually) gets his man, if not the girl. Rather that his humanity, fallibility, dark humour - and the sheer train wreck of his life - grab our minds and hearts and never let go.

If you've read any of Atkinson’s novels, then you won't need much arm-twisting to read this one, the sixth to feature Jackson Brodie. Just as there are spy fiction writers and then there's John Le Carre so, in this reviewer's mind at least, there are crime writers and then there's Kate Atkinson.

Jackson Brodie trails his personal history like a long-life shopping bag and he's instrumental in unravelling the truth behind the crimes, but he's not a permanent presence in the novel. DC Reggie Chase, the rookie police detective last seen in “Big Sky”, is given equal billing this time. Reggie is a warm-hearted young woman who’s clever - but not always wise - beyond her years.

It seems that Atkinson has decided to have fun with this latest novel in the series. She places her focus on the other main characters. And what a menagerie they make: the battleaxe - or just plain batty - dowager marchioness and her graceless offspring; the solitary vicar who has lost his only child, then his faith and now his voice; and the young army officer, invalided out with only one leg and yet to find an alternative purpose in life.

Written like that, it might not sound as if humour was the intention. But Atkinson sets these characters against a background straight out of Agatha Christie: a crumbling stately home, a missing Old Master or two, a killer on the run, a snowstorm in which three of the main characters get separately stranded, and the unloved novels of a whodunit writer, whose creaking plots mirror the real-life crimes.

Atkinson ramps up the comedy by pitching her real-life characters against pretend ones, a troupe of might-have-been actors who are contracted to perform in a Murder Mystery evening at the stately home. No-one, except perhaps Jackson, seems able to separate the stage villains from the real ones. The action hurtles at an ever-increasing pace towards near-farce and the bodies, dead or just acting, mount up.

The Christie parody is of course intentional: only a writer of Atkinson's skill could pull this off without straining credibility to breaking point. In the meantime, her trademark one-liners propel the reader along. Talking to the heirs of a deceased old lady who describe her death as 'peaceful', Jackson muses, "He had seen a lot of dead people, and he wouldn't call them peaceful. He would call them dead." When it comes to the Pet Service at the local parish church, Lady Milton "made a point of not taking her own dogs. It might have given them ideas."

Atkinson also has the uncanny ability to take an everyday observation and turn it on its head. Contemplating the gravestones in his churchyard, the vicar reflects that plague victims "had never tasted coffee. Or tea for that matter. Or potatoes. The list of deprivations in the Middle Ages was a long one." The invalided soldier with his too-stiff-upper-lip parents believes that "if you spent too long trying to look on the bright side, you became dazzled and couldn't see anything properly.”

So, how does this compare with other Jackson Brodie novels? Much as I enjoyed it, I doubt it will rank with her very best. Admittedly, "When Will There Be Good News?" was a pretty hard act to follow, with one of the most jaw-dropping opening chapters I've ever read. The book had the power to make you both laugh and cry, many times. The bereft vicar apart, this latest novel is weighted more towards comedy: and indeed, I laughed, but I would have liked more of the emotional tug of its predecessors…

In the same way as Graham Greene described some of his own oeuvre, “Death at the Sign of the Rook” could perhaps be classed as an 'entertainment' rather than a novel. But I'll take a Kate Atkinson 'entertainment' over someone else's magnum opus, any day.

Death at the Sign of the Rook is published by Penguin.

David Breakell's The Alchemist of Genoa is published by Dower House Books.

See also: Nicola Morgan's review of Kate Atkinson's A God in Ruins.

A VOICE IN THE NIGHT by Simon Mason, reviewed by Adèle Geras

" ... a nuanced rivalry which veers from irritation to anger to wonderfully complicated friendship which neither man would actually describe as such, but which is nevertheless real and touching."

Adèle Geras has written many books for children and young adults and seven novels for adults, the latest of which (under the pseudonym Hope Adams) is Dangerous Women, published by Michael Joseph. She lives in Cambridge.

For anyone who does not know him, Simon Mason is, as well as a wonderful writer, a friend of this blog. He was our special guest recently and we are fans of his work.

On one level, Mason might be said to write quite a traditional sort of crime story. His Wilkins and Wilkins series (I'm calling them that. I haven't seen them described so in newspapers) contains two cops, contrasted in many ways, solving crimes in a particular area. There are the accustomed wisecracks, of course, but in addition this pair share both a surname and initials. They started work on the same day but the differences between them couldn't be greater. Of course, these lead to much comedy along the way but also create a nuanced rivalry which veers from irritation to anger to wonderfully complicated friendship which neither man would actually describe as such, but which is nevertheless real and touching. On the cover of A Voice in the Night, Mick Herron calls them "crime fiction's most entertaining double act in decades" and he's right.

Ray Wilkins is very handsome, Black, sharply dressed and a graduate. Ryan Wilkins is skinny as a rake, wears dreadful clothes (a lime green puffa jacket features in this book) and comes from a decaying estate. His father was abusive. His late wife died of a drug overdose. He's no beauty but has a fine line in repartee and huge charm, at least for me. He's what would definitely be called "poor white trash" in the USA. But he has a superb instinct for people, and can deal with them in a way most other policemen cannot. He lives with his sister, Jade, who works at the Co-op. Most importantly of all, he's father to little Ryan who is easily the most wonderful toddler I can remember in recent fiction. The relationship between father and son is what lifts these novels up out of the general run of crime books. It's movingly described and often provides another dimension to whatever is going on in the police action.

This novel is the fourth in the series. I am a believer in starting series with Book 1, but it's not strictly necessary. What you miss starting with Book 4 is the history: what's gone on between Ryan and his son, between Ryan and Ray, between Ryan and his police chiefs, between the police and a nice assortment of low-life living and committing crime around Oxford. My advice: you ought to buy all four books at once ...

This one is terrific. The body of a linguistics professor is found still dressed in his pyjamas, dripping wet and lying on the lawn in front of a hotel. There's also been a security guard stabbed to death during an armed robbery. On top of all that, there's a new female officer in charge of things at the station and charged with clearing up these matters. DCS Wainwright is much more than she at first appears, and very interesting.

Meanwhile, back home, Jade and little Ryan are threatened by a gang whom Ryan has met before. Michael, the chief young yobbo, is superbly described. Even villains in Mason's book are portrayed in a three-dimensional way.

Just over half way through the book, something happens that was like a sledgehammer to the heart. I'm not saying another word. But be assured, in the end we reach a solution. Mason even manages to pull off that wonderful trick of a surprise as the last thing we read ... a rare event in fiction. I hope lots of people get to know Ray and Ryan before the inevitable TV adaptation, because (and I am not sure why I've left this till the end) one of the glories of these novels is the way they're written. Oxford and the countryside around it come subtly to life and every sentence is elegant and perfectly judged. Mason's prose is not show-offish or mannered but simply elegant and suited in every way to the story he's telling.

A Voice in the Night is published by riverrun.

Simon Mason's feature for our 8th birthday last July: on the crime fiction of Peter Temple.

THE LAST REMAINS by Elly Griffiths, reviewed by Adèle Geras

"If you have never read these books, then start right now ..."

Adèle Geras has written many books for children and young adults and six novels for adults, the latest of which (under the pseudonym Hope Adams) is Dangerous Women, published by Michael Joseph. She lives in Cambridge.

One of the best presents I was given for my birthday this year was a copy of Elly Griffiths' latest Dr Ruth Galloway mystery. My friend Wendy Cope gave it to me ... we've been reading about Ruth and her companions alongside one another since The Crossing Places, which was the book that launched the series in 2009. For sixteen years, at the rate of almost a book a year, we've lived with Ruth and followed her life and her adventures. We've got to know her lover, Harry Nelson, a married policeman who heads a team of men and women who are all fully rounded characters. If you love the Ruth Galloway books, you belong to a kind of gang.

Appropriately, a book called The Last Remains is the final book about this particular detective and her friends. I was therefore almost bereft when I came to the end of the story. I live in hope that some years further down the line, there will be a case which brings everyone back one more time ....but till then, Elly Griffiths has created a glorious collection of stories about one of the most likeable of detectives.

From the start, Ruth was more like a normal person than most detectives. She was, for one thing, not thin. She describes herself as needing to lose weight, though this aspect, which made me warm to her, is less important as the books go on. Throughout the series, her relationship with Harry Nelson is the spine that holds the narrative together, gives it an emotional core absent from many other books, and provides a continuity that makes Griffiths' fans go back again and again to see how those two are getting on. I know Elly a little and every time I meet her I beg her to make things end well for our hero and heroine. I'm saying nothing about what happens. You will have to read the book. Of course the fact that the top policeman has a distinguished archaeologist to help him, makes the answers to the mysteries much more interesting. Their adventures take them in all kinds of unexpected directions, and there's a thread of magic, worlds beyond our own, the slightly supernatural which runs through the books. Cathbad, Ruth's friend who is a Druid, carries most of the weight of these themes in the novels and he's one of her most attractive creations. Mystery surrounds him even in the midst of the most prosaic situations.

Because we've lived with these characters for so long, we have followed a great many stories through recent history. Cathbad almost died of Covid. Ruth has a daughter with Nelson, and we watch Kate grow into a young person who reflects well on the way her mother has brought her up. Nelson's family also help in Kate's development and are present in her life. A situation which could have become very fraught has always (even through many ups and downs, some of them very dramatic) been managed in a way that's both civilised and plausible.

The stories are set in Norfolk and bring that county most beautifully to life. Ruth lives in one of three cottages on a salt marsh and we are always made aware of what every location looks like. Griffiths never over -describes, but can paint a scene in very few sentences so that we feel we are there. Her dialogue is pitch perfect. It never sounds artificial, but as though real people are talking. She's very good at animals and I have grown especially fond of Ruth's cat Flint. Cathbad's dog (called Thing) is a bull terrier of impeccable character but I have to confess to being one of those people who have a 'thing' about that breed. My bad. Thing is totally lovely in every respect.

In The Last Remains, the body of a young woman is found behind the boarded-up wall of what used to be a café back in the day. Suspicion falls on a group of students and their charismatic and creepy tutor who used to frequent the café long ago. Cathbad, who was then called Michael Malone, was one of their number. What does he know? How involved was he? When he goes missing, there's a possibility that he may have something to hide. Alongside all this, Ruth's University is about to axe the Department of Archaeology. A colleague of hers has something surprising to tell her. Nelson's wife, Michelle, who had been living apart from her husband, has returned to Norfolk. There's an awful lot going on and it's miraculous that Griffiths manages to keep all the balls in the air so brilliantly. Also, there's a reference in this novel to events that happened in the other books, so that you're reminded as you read of all that you've read before. The solution is elegant with a really poignant and unexpected revelation towards the end of the book.

I will now go and catch up with other novels by Griffiths that I haven't read yet. And yes, she has written many other novels. She's one of the most prolific writers of mysteries at work today.

Goodbye, Ruth and co. Reading about you for all these years was a real treat and I hope that one day, you might return. I want to see what Kate becomes. I want to see Ruth and Nelson as grandparents. I want more....

If you have never read these books, then start right now. You won't regret it.

The Last Remains is published by Quercus.

See also Elly Griffiths' The Postscript Murders, reviewed by Rachel Ward.