Wednesday, 15 May 2019

Kate Atkinson - When Will There Be Good News?


Rating: 5/5

Review:
Terrific

I love the Jackson Brodie series. As detective thrillers they may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I found this, like the others, thoughtful, engrossing and immensely enjoyable.

In When Will There Be Good News, a thoroughly unlikely series of events takes Brodie back to Edinburgh where we are introduced to a group of variously connected characters, a historic murder whose perpetrator is being released after 30 years and, of course, Louise Monroe (now a DCI) who is as gloriously spiky as ever and in a superficially perfect marriage to a charming and cultured surgeon. It is Kate Atkinson’s portrayal of these characters which makes the books so brilliant; her writing is pitch perfect and rich, recognisable pictures of real people rise from the page to involve you in their lives. There are crimes, some exciting action scenes and so on, but on the whole the action is at a very measured pace. I love that and found myself completely gripped, so that I had no trouble in overlooking the rather large number of coincidences in the plot.

In short, I thought this was terrific. It’s a very fine novel of character while being a thoroughly readable and enjoyable detective story. Very warmly recommended.

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