Kate Atkinson’s latest novel is the fourth in her series about Jackson Brodie, the ex-soldier, ex-police officer and ex-husband who now works in a desultory way as a private investigator.
Kate Atkinson’s latest novel is the fourth in her series about Jackson Brodie, the ex-soldier, ex-police officer and ex-husband who now works in a desultory way as a private investigator. Like its predecessors, Started Early, Took My Dog takes place in an exhilarating and occasionally infuriating version of modern Britain that reads as if designed by a theoretical physicist with a sense of humour.
The novel is equipped with two epigraphs. The first is the rhyme beginning ‘For want of a nail the shoe was lost’, which sums up one of the book’s themes. The second is a chilling remark made by the Yorkshire Ripper, an unseen presence in the story: ‘I was just cleaning up the place a bit.
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