Like a great city, the mystery genre is home to many different communities. There are police procedurals, locked-room teasers, hard-boiled detective yarns and the soothing small-town cozies you find on Acorn TV. One of the merrier neighborhoods is that of the meta-mystery — PBS’ Magpie Murders series is a great example — whose creators don’t simply tell a story. They lean into the artificiality of mysteries, highlighting and sometimes laying bare the gambits and tropes that keep us reading.
The latest arrival in this neighborhood is Death at the Sign of the Rook, the sunny sixth entry in Kate Atkinson's addictive series about Jackson Brodie, a sometimes saturnine private detective with a German shepherd’s keen eye for abuse. Last time out, in Big Sky, Brodie cracked a child molestation gang in a tale that recalled the real-life case of BBC entertainer Jimmy Savile. Perhaps because that story was so grim — too nasty, really, for Atkinson’s generous style — she’s made this latest installment a lark. The book flirts with, and tweaks, Golden-Age mysteries like those of Agatha Christie.
Death at the Sign of the Rook begins with an invitation to a "Murder Mystery Weekend" at Burton Makepeace House, a Downton Abbey-like stately home in Yorkshire. There, we’re told, guests will engage in what sounds like a live-action version of the game Clue, with actors playing all the parts. The invitation doesn’t mention that the weekend is being offered because Burton Makepeace’s owners, Lord and Lady Milton, are strapped for cash.
From the moment we read about a weekend devoted to solving a fake murder, we know there will be a real one. We also know that Brodie will wind up there. The question is how.
The answer starts with him being asked to find a painting stolen by the woman who’d been caring for his clients’ terminally ill mother. To track her down, he enlists the aid of Det. Constable Reggie Chase. She had investigated an earlier art theft at — where else? — Burton Makepeace.
Now, Atkinson loves a densely-populated story. Even as Brodie and Reggie pursue leads, the book takes us inside the heads of three other key characters, who’ve all lost something big: Simon, a village reverend, has lost his faith. Ben, an army major, lost his leg in Afghanistan, and with it his sense of purpose. And Lady Milton — whose thoughts are hilariously WASP-ish — has lost her privilege. We know that this trio will play a part in the Murder Mystery Weekend.
The heart of the novel is, of course, Brodie, now in his 60s, grumpy about the changing world, but happy with his new Land Rover Defender. As the victim of an abusive father, he’s possessed of a strict code: “You were allowed to hit men — sometimes it was wrong not to — but not women, children, or dogs.” Six novels in, it’s clear that Atkinson treasures Brodie as an appealing fantasy, an ideal version of the flawed, all too human modern male, battered by experience but filled with decency and curiosity and gruff charm.
Of course, Atkinson also writes prize-winning literary fiction — her masterpiece is 2015’s A God in Ruins — yet she feels no need to cordon off the Brodie novels from her so-called “serious” ones. Her mysteries brim with the same warm attention to vulnerable souls, the same nifty wit — she uses parentheticals like a guillotine — and the same fascination with the world around her.
Indeed, Atkinson uses this latest mystery to ruminate on scads of things: politics, television programs, art theft, the horrors of war, the decline of religion, violence against women and the workings of old-fashioned mystery novels with their “bloodless plots.” Hers is not a fiction of zen astringency.
On the contrary, Death at the Sign of the Rook strews loose ends all over the Yorkshire countryside. Have I mentioned that there’s an escaped killer on the prowl? Or that a white-out blizzard is about to hit Burton Makepeace? Yet even as characters and events and ideas proliferate, Atkinson never loses sight of any of them. Her books always start out looking shaggy, but wind up being anything but.
By the time we reach the Murder Mystery Weekend itself, all the book’s loose ends get woven together. And even though this novel makes fun of the classic murder mystery — with its baroque plots and too-neat solutions — Atkinson understands its delights. As everything clicks into place — and the mystery is solved — we let out a satisfied, Ahhh.
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