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3.66 AVERAGE
3.66 AVERAGE
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
So I tried the first book in the Jackson Brodie series last year and found it pretty mid — some of the character studies were quite good and elements of the mystery interested me, but it failed to come together and felt increasingly messy by the end. As an indication of what a hash it was, it doesn't feel like a spoiler to say that at one point the main character's house explodes and it's not even a big deal. Like at all.
All this to say, I'm not sure why I picked this up, other than that I thought the series would improve.
Reader, it did not.
In this book Jackson's girlfriend is in an Edinburgh Fringe show so he's visiting the city with her. He witnesses a road rage incident, and from there manages to implicate himself in a series of crimes he's got nothing to do with, then attempts to solve them and prove his innocence.
These books are billed as literary crime, and I take issue with both those adjectives. Let's start with literary: I simply don't think the writing is that good. The character voices are suspiciously samey, possessed of a scolding, up-tight tone that's downright unpleasant to read. Dragging myself through every banal middle-aged man thought Jackson had about every woman he meets to be rewarded with a damp squib of a plot simply wasn't worth it.
As for crime, the premise of these books could be best described as 'interesting things sometimes happen, oh and Jackson Brodie is also there'. For a detective, supposedly the star of a detective fiction series, this guy does almost no detective work across either book. Most of what's revealed comes to the reader from other character povs, and even then is unsurprising or otherwise convenient to the point I wasn't able to suspend disbelief.
The thing that fully ruined this for me though is that Jackson, who I think Atkinson tries to cast as a flawed but fundamentally good man, fully admits to r*ping his girlfriend in her sleep. As in, he names it as r*pe, ponders how he doesn't know how she'd feel if he were to mention it to her, and then he just... moves on.
Sorry, nope. Thank fuck this was a library loan, eh?
Content Warnings
Moderate: Rape
3.5 stars. Kate Atkinson is a pleasure to read - great characters, nicely interwoven stories, and some mystery to boot.
An enjoyable follow-up to Kate Atkinson’s first Jackson Brodie novel, Case Histories, mixing humour with gloomier musings. Brodie - retired from being a detective - is in Edinburgh for the Fringe festival with his girlfriend, Julia (who he met in Case Histories). But as in the previous book, it’s not just his story or even a detective story but a narrative that rotates through a set of disparate characters connected by a violent assault, dodgy businesses and a murder. It is an enthralling crime novel with literary pretensions, playing with ideas around duality and identity. It also amusingly captures the spirit of Edinburgh during the festivals.
Slow to start and then really gets going once the narrative threads start weaving together. Will keep reading this series. The ending made me cackle.
I did not love this nearly as much as Case Histories - none of it quite came together in the way the last novel did. But, it was pleasant enough, and I'm compelled to keep reading in the series.
perfect. Every word perfect . perfectly placed. perfection.
mysterious
medium-paced
adventurous
dark
funny
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
2nd in the series. As with the first, I found myself wanting to give up after trying to connect the seemingly random characters in each chapter. About halfway through, the loose threads start to come together and then it's a race to find out how to finish before 2 am!
"Two years after the events of Case Histories left him a retired millionaire, Jackson Brodie has followed Julia, his occasional girlfriend and former client, to Edinburgh for its famous summer arts festival. But when he witnesses a man being brutally attacked in a traffic jam - the apparent victim of an extreme case of road rage - a chain of events is set in motion that will pull the wife of an unscrupulous real estate tycoon, a timid but successful crime novelist, and a hardheaded female police detective into Jackson's orbit. Suddenly out of retirement, Jackson is once again in the midst of several mysteries that intersect in one giant and sinister scheme."
"Two years after the events of Case Histories left him a retired millionaire, Jackson Brodie has followed Julia, his occasional girlfriend and former client, to Edinburgh for its famous summer arts festival. But when he witnesses a man being brutally attacked in a traffic jam - the apparent victim of an extreme case of road rage - a chain of events is set in motion that will pull the wife of an unscrupulous real estate tycoon, a timid but successful crime novelist, and a hardheaded female police detective into Jackson's orbit. Suddenly out of retirement, Jackson is once again in the midst of several mysteries that intersect in one giant and sinister scheme."