 |
After
two self-indulgent detours, Atkinson proves that her Whitbread Award-winning
debut, Behind the Scenes at the Museum (1996), was no fluke with a
novel about three interconnected mysteries.
They seem totally unrelated at first to private detective Jackson
Brodie, hired by separate individuals in Cambridge, England, to investigate
long-dormant cases. Three-year-old Olivia Land disappeared from a
tent in her family's backyard in 1970; 34 years later, her sisters
Amelia and Julia discover Olivia's stuffed toy in their recently deceased
father's study and want Jackson to find out what he had to do with
the disappearance.
Theo Wyre's beloved 18-year-old daughter Laura was murdered by a knife-wielding
lunatic in 1994, and he too hires Jackson to crack this unsolved murder.
Michelle was also 18 when she went to jail in 1979 for killing her
husband with an ax while their infant daughter wailed in the playpen;
she vanished after serving her time, but Shirley Morrison asks Jackson
to find, not her sister Michelle, but the niece she promised to raise,
then was forced to hand over to grandparents.
The detective, whose bitter ex-wife uses Jackson's profound love for
their eight-year-old daughter to torture him, finds all these stories
of dead and/or missing girls extremely unsettling; we learn toward
the end why the subject of young women in peril is particularly painful
for him.
Atkinson has always been a gripping storyteller, and her complicated
narrative crackles with the earthy humor, vibrant characterizations,
and shrewd social observations that enlivened her first novel but
were largely swamped by postmodern game-playing in Human Croquet (1997)
and Emotionally Weird (2000). Here, she craftsa compulsive page-turner
that looks deep into the heart of sadness, cruelty, and loss, yet
ultimately grants her charming p.i. (and most of the other appealingly
offbeat characters, including one killer) a chance at happiness and
some measure of reconciliation with the past. Wonderful fun and very
moving: it's a pleasure to see this talented writer back on form.
|