Started Early, Took My Dog

Starred review from January 17, 2011
British author Atkinson's magnificently plotted fourth novel featuring Jackson Brodie (after When Will There Be Good News?) takes the "semi-retired" PI back to his Yorkshire hometown to trace the biological parents of Hope McMasters, a woman adopted by a couple in the 1970s at age two. Jackson is faced with more questions than answers when Hope's parents aren't in any database nor is her adoption on record. In the author's signature multilayered style, she shifts between past and present, interweaving the stories of Tracy Waterhouse, a recently retired detective superintendent now in charge of security at a Leeds mall, and aging actress Tilly Squires. On the same day that Jackson and Tilly are in the mall, Tracy makes a snap decision that will have lasting consequences for everyone. Atkinson injects wit even in the bleakest moments—such as Jackson's newfound appreciation for poetry, evoked in the Emily Dickinson–inspired title—yet never loses her razor-sharp edge.

While Graeme Malcolm makes little effort to try to imitate the variety of memorable characters Atkinson gives him to work with, his narration is, nonetheless, sophisticated and nuanced. This is Atkinson's fourth outing with the semiretired, terminally lonely P.I. Jackson Brodie. Here he is looking for the seemingly nonexistent biological parents of a grown woman, a search that eventually connects to another long-ago missing child, a murder, and a police cover-up. As narrator, Malcolm is at once detached and intimate. One by one, he seems to dissect each of the characters, revealing the wonder of Atkinson's storytelling. M.O. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine