When Will There Be Good News?

Starred review from July 28, 2008
In Atkinson's stellar third novel to feature ex-cop turned PI Jackson Brodie (after One Good Turn
), unrelated characters and plot lines collide with momentous results. On a country road, six-year-old Joanna Mason is the only survivor of a knife attack that leaves her mother and two siblings dead. Thirty years later, after boarding the wrong train in Yorkshire, Brodie is almost killed when the train crashes. He's saved by 16-year-old Regina “Reggie” Chase, the nanny of Dr. Joanna Hunter, née Mason. In the chaos following the crash, Brodie ends up with the wallet of Andrew Decker, the recently released man convicted of murdering the Mason family. Enter DCI Louise Monroe, Brodie's former love interest, who's tracking Decker because of a recent case involving a similar family and crime. When Dr. Hunter disappears, Reggie is convinced she's been kidnapped and enlists the reluctant Brodie to track her down. A lesser author would buckle under so many story lines, but Atkinson juggles them brilliantly, simultaneously tying up loose ends from Turn
and opening new doors for further Brodie misadventures.

October 27, 2008
The latest Atkinson mystery finds detective Jackson Brodie back in the English countryside, where he becomes caught up in a missing person’s case that forces old memories and past mistakes to the forefront of his mind. Told from a mainly female perspective, both that of detective chief Louise Monroe and victim Joanna Mason, the story is delivered perfectly by narrator Ellen Archer. She is fully and completely aware of the undertones in most of her characters’ voices, and when she captures them, she creates a stirring experience for her audience. As Brodie, Archer is slightly less effective, only because she opts for a straightforward, dry tone that is less flashy. But her portrayal of Reggie, a 16-year-old Scottish boy, is amazingly astute and shaded. A Little, Brown hardcover (Reviews, July 28).