‘Death at the Sign of the Rook’ is not Kate Atkinson’s best outing

Death at the Sign of the Rook
Kate Atkinson
Doubleday

Any new Kate Atkinson novel is an event for her fans, and at the start of this review I admit to being a committed one.

It is a good few years since we have had one of her delicious and witty Jackson Brodie crime novels, but Death at the Sign of the Rook is a return for the ex-cop now private detective.

The story opens with the scene-setting of a murder mystery weekend in a crumbling stately home turned hotel, and then we go back a week to Jackson being contacted by a gloomy brother and sister pair about a missing painting, possibly valuable, that belonged to their late mother. They want Jackson to track down the painting, and the mother’s former carer who has also gone missing. We get to hear about another missing painting, maybe a Turner, from the site of the murder weekend that is being planned, and a missing housekeeper from there.

Then we leave Jackson, and meet other people from the neighbourhood, including the ancient Lady Milton (something of a caricature of an aristocrat), a vicar who has lost his faith, an ex-army veteran with PTSD, the down-at-heel acting troupe who will carry out the murder mystery drama and an ex-colleague and old friend of Jackson’s. Throw in an escaped serial killer and a snowstorm that will ensure everyone is stuck in the stately home with no means of escape, and you have the ingredients for a typical throwback to, or spoof of, the classic country house murder mystery.

Atkinson’s characteristic wit, smart one-liners and cleverness, along with the fun that is always around with Jackson, are all there, but, even as a long-time fan, I have to admit there are problems. The main one is that there is not enough of Jackson. The story spends too long away from him, and too much time on the other characters. All too often it is difficult to care much about them as they seem to be cardboard cutouts rather than real and engaging people, with Atkinson’s jokey tone undercutting the character building. The hunt for the missing artworks and the women who have gone missing with them is all rather perfunctory.

I don’t think Atkinson could ever write a bad book, and hard realism has never been a part of the Jackson Brodie tales, but Death at the Sign of the Rook is not her best outing.