When Will There Be Good News?

Kate Atkinson stretches herself too thin in places in this new PI Jackson Brodie novel, with some five plot lines crisscrossing like a cat's cradle gone gothic. The life of the newly (and unwisely) married Brodie intersects those of Joanna Mason; her thuggish husband; her charming teenaged nanny; Brodie's former flame, Police Inspector Louise Monroe, who is also newly married; Andrew Decker, who once murdered Joanna's family; three kidnappers; and a train wreck. Really. Steven Crossley's masterful performance helps the listener remember and care about a very long list of major characters, and he is never less than supremely entertaining as he sells you coincidence after unlikely coincidence as if they all just show what an ironic and wicked old world this is. B.G. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

Starred review from July 28, 2008
In Atkinson's stellar third novel to feature ex-cop turned PI Jackson Brodie (after One Good Turn
), unrelated characters and plot lines collide with momentous results. On a country road, six-year-old Joanna Mason is the only survivor of a knife attack that leaves her mother and two siblings dead. Thirty years later, after boarding the wrong train in Yorkshire, Brodie is almost killed when the train crashes. He's saved by 16-year-old Regina “Reggie” Chase, the nanny of Dr. Joanna Hunter, née Mason. In the chaos following the crash, Brodie ends up with the wallet of Andrew Decker, the recently released man convicted of murdering the Mason family. Enter DCI Louise Monroe, Brodie's former love interest, who's tracking Decker because of a recent case involving a similar family and crime. When Dr. Hunter disappears, Reggie is convinced she's been kidnapped and enlists the reluctant Brodie to track her down. A lesser author would buckle under so many story lines, but Atkinson juggles them brilliantly, simultaneously tying up loose ends from Turn
and opening new doors for further Brodie misadventures.

Ellen Archer definitely has her work cut out. Kate Atkinson's latest novel featuring Jackson Brodie, private detective, weaves together multiple characters and stories that eventually converge. Joanna Hunter, GP and sole survivor of a family massacre 30 years earlier, goes missing, along with her baby. Reggie, her "mother's help," believes she's been kidnapped. Add to the mix a train crash, drugs, mistaken identity, a couple of dogs, a whole lot of thugs, and even a tutor who is rapture-ready. Atkinson successfully juggles all the balls, and Archer is game. Archer's performance is spirited, hilarious, nuanced, and stunning; characters are distinct, and accents are convincing. Especially endearing is Archer's interpretation of Reggie, whose precociousness and Scots brogue give personality to her constant chatter and badgering of the authorities. A.B. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine