He’d been out of the real business of detecting for too long. Entrapping unfaithful boyfriends and husbands wasn’t dealing with criminals, just high-functioning morons. [loc. 2408]
I've enjoyed Atkinson's previous Jackson Brodie novels, though not as much as I've enjoyed her other work (see various reviews here): Big Sky, however, left me cold. Jackson Brodie -- sharing custody of his teenage son with Julia, carrying out run-of-the-mill investigations in Yorkshire, starting to feel as though he may be past his best -- is peripheral to the main stories here, which are definitely in 'lost girls' territory. There is the lingering rumour of a third man involved in a historical paedophile ring; there is the lucrative Exotic Travel, which is more of an import business; there is a child getting into a car, observed by Brodie, whose instincts tell him something is wrong.
There are some splendid women here, notably Crystal, who has remade her life after a shaky start and is now the wife of a successful businessman, raising her daughter to want for nothing. She's tacky and superficial, in some respects: but she has an iron will.
Big Sky redeems itself, in part, by a denouement that involves true justice rather than literal facts: but the theme was so grim, and Jackson's middle-agedness so hopeless, that even a week after reading I am happy to have forgotten most of the details of the plot.
No comments:
Post a Comment