Death at the Sign of the Rook

The five novels featuring former police officer Jackson Brodie—this would be the sixth—are each a bit idiosyncratic. But Atkinson’s many fans need to brace themselves for this title, a delightful, cozyish homage to the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. We start out at a Murder Mystery Weekend in Rook Hall, “a country house hotel located within Burton Makepeace House, one of England’s premier stately homes.” Dowager Marchioness Lady Milton and her hateful offspring have already auctioned off most of the artwork, commercialized what they could, and sold the remaining cottages. Back to Jackson, hired by a brother and sister to track down their mother’s carer, who disappeared with a Renaissance portrait—artist and provenance unknown—shortly after their mother died. There are some extraordinary similarities, not in the art itself, but between how the Renaissance work, and a Turner painting that went missing from Burton Makepease House several years back, were stolen. Which is how Jackson ends up at the Mystery Weekend. This book dazzles in three ways. One, the interior monologues—Atkins goes deep into the lives of many of the characters—are just brilliant. Two, the dialogue is terrifically clever, with the aristocrats in particular pulling no punches. Three, the gathering for Mystery Weekend brings together all manner of participants, from the vicar to a California cardiologist to an army major to a couple of corpses, in an evening that turns out to be as dark as it is comic. And did I mention the snowstorm that traps them all in Burton Makepeace House?