When suicidal thoughts bring Vince to the edge of a cliff, he explains himself succinctly to Brodie, his rescuer: “I’ve lived a very little life.” And when Brodie seems a bit full of himself, he’s smartly reminded that “there’s nothing heroic about a lone wolf. That brings Vince and all his golfing friends and their spouses into the story, every last one of them examined in depth with equal parts wit and compassion. What’s a mystery without a murder? Atkinson introduces that tantalizing element when Vince Ives’s virago of a wife, Wendy, is beaten to death with a golf club. “Or did she have an endgame that she wasn’t sharing?” Excellent question hold onto that one too, and let’s move deeper into the thickets of this wondrously complicated plot. The detective wonders whether his client takes masochistic pleasure in the humiliation. Hold onto that plot thread because Atkinson makes child’s play of spinning multiple story lines it will eventually tie into several more.īefore Brodie can do battle with the sleazy Anderson Price outfit, he has to convince Penny Trotter that he’s turned up sufficient evidence her husband is cheating on her. Lured from their home in Gdansk with offers of work in London, Nadja and Katya are about to be forced into the sex trade by heartless con men hiding behind the imposing but bogus facade of Anderson Price Associates, a nonexistent employment service. Two sisters from Poland are Brodie’s kind of people.

Kate Atkinson’s no-nonsense private detective will do whatever it takes, lawful or otherwise, to bring his idiosyncratic brand of justice to wounded crime victims. After nine long years in the wilderness, Jackson Brodie is back on the job in BIG SKY (Little, Brown, $28).

Jackson brodie