After too long a wait, Jackson Brodie is back and in fine form. Last autumn, I attended a packed reading given by Kate Atkinson and the auditorium filled with cheers when the author announced she had just that week finished a new Brody novel.

Our excited expectations have been met--"Big Sky" crackles with Atkinson's trademark wit, labyrinthine plotting and characters that we either love, or love to hate. I've enjoyed everything Atkinson has ever written and this novel is no exception. Highly recommended!

Thank you to the publishers and Netgalley for the ARC.

I gave up on this one after reading about 15% of it. The characters were a muddle, it was too confusing to follow and keep track of *so* many relationships.

Writing: 4/5 Plot: 3/5 Characters: 4/5

An unusual crime drama — Atkinson’s fifth about Jackson Brodie, former policeman and soldier turned Private Investigator in Yorkshire. Brodie has your typical gruff exterior, and his personal life is in a perpetual, confusing, shambles, but he is a self-appointed White Knight. He has an eye for the predators in the world (and his world is full of them), and he feels a responsibility to potential victims everywhere. He will not rest — paid or not — until he is sure that everyone is safe.

The story is dark — as are all of Atkinson’s stories. This one revolves around human trafficking in myriad forms. The style is interesting — while Jackson is a familiar (to us) character, he is not the center of a single investigation. Instead, he is a player in a tangled web that includes various past and present strands of a set of ongoing and horrific crimes that eventually come together and are resolved (in a very satisfying way). While not in any sense a cozy, neither is it a nail-biter (important to me as I don’t like to purposely stress myself). The writing style is interesting. It appears muddy — with constant tangents and sardonic asides — but really is just a true-to-life depiction of the way people think. Each chapter is told from a different character’s perspective (all third person omniscient) so we are treated to an inside, tangled, look at what they are thinking, obsessing over, worrying about, hoping for, leering at, and feeling guilty about, simultaneous with what is actually happening in the scene. We get real insight to so many of the characters in this fashion. Oddly enough, my favorite character is Crystal, the clean eating, “trophy wife” of a husband she really doesn’t know that well, with a hefty (secret) past of her own.

Lots of plot lines that tie together (perhaps a little too neatly) at the end. What appears chaotic and confusing at the beginning comes together in just the way it would if you were dropped in to the story with an apparently small job on the periphery (as Jackson himself was). It did feel like the rapid closure of the many wiggling parts was a tad too hasty. This was an early access copy so perhaps that will be evened out before publication.

Admittedly, it’s difficult for me to write an unbiased review of a Kate Atkinson novel. When I received this book from NetGalley, I immediately tweeted “she is our greatest living author, don’t @ me”, which – I actually wish someone would “@” me, because I’m more than happy to explain all the ways Atkinson is brilliant (almost terrifying so).

My favourite books of Atkinson’s are Life After Life and A God in Ruins (the latter absolutely shattered me – I think I cried enough to fill oceans), but I do so love her Jackson Brodie series for its sly wit and the river of devastation running beneath its surfaces. Big Sky is a worthy entry into the Brodie lexicon, and her best since Case Histories.

A mystery at its core, with thousands of tiny threads that come together to form a very messy, very real tapestry of human misery and joy and rotten, ruined hopes, Big Sky is about the sex trade, about families and the way they disappoint us, about exploitation and greed, and how where men fall, women rise up.

Brodie is hiding out on the coast, working as a private investigator. It’s the usual stuff – cheating husbands, cheating wives, icky individuals on the Internet, and perhaps a stolen item or two or three. He’s clearly bored, but he’s also clearly enjoying the chance to spend more time with his son Nathan – a miserable, stroppy, absolutely delightful teenager – their interactions are such comic gold that I laughed out loud numerous times. Big Sky is inarguably hilarious, in that perfectly dry British way –

She was a self-described Christian, born-again or something like that (once was enough, surely?)


That’s the thing about Kate Atkinson – one minute you’re flinching, the next you’re audibly snorting. It’s a roller coaster.

In true Brodie fashion, our erstwhile detective stumbles upon a human trafficking ring in the sleepy little coastal town, and the tension ratchets up and up, until it seems everything will explode, sending bombs across the sea. What’s singularly arresting about the central mystery is that the crimes go back decades and have such miserable arrows running from their centres – you can only imagine how much pain and suffering has been spread. Some bits made my stomach hurt (“the passion wagon”, “parties”, “the two sisters”, “the disappeared, gone where no flashlights could illuminate”), and it’s a testament to Atkinson’s power that the novel isn’t merely depressing – rather, I put it down with a sense of wounds bandaged by glorious retribution.

Don’t mistake me – the subject matter is raw and the kind of subtle that makes you wish for a novelist with less grace (sometimes, the less graphic things are, the more the imagination fills in the horrifying blanks). But still, it’s there – subterranean but mighty – like a sword or axe or queen – the female. The strength. The eyes meeting. Warrior to warrior. Survivor to survivor.

Where men fall, women rise.

With as much power, as much grit, as that big blue sky.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. I appreciate it!

I loved all the novels featuring Jackson Brodie, so my first criticism of this book is....WHY DID YOU WAIT SO LONG? That being said, I think Atkinson is truly one of our great writers, but the hiatus of 8 years (filled with some incredible novels) made it difficult for me to sink into the character of Jackson. The book demands that the reader have access to the earlier adventures of Brodie. but after 8 years it was tough, even for a fan, to pick up all the details.

So, admittedly, I found it difficult to get back into the pieces of Brodie’s life that brought him here. BIG SKY takes on an issue that is often on the news and universal, the trafficking of young people in the sex trade. It is very well done and provides a framework for Brodie’s crime solving foray.

As I read this book, I remembered how much I love the character of Brodie. I hope he comes back soon. I am certain that readers will enjoy the book and find a basis for discussions on the issue of sex trafficking.

Thank you Netgalley for allowing me to be an early reader and get reacquainted with one of my favorite characters.

It’s been nearly a decade since Atkinson published her last Jackson Brodie novel, but finally the long wait is over. The cop/soldier turned PI has moved to a quiet seaside village where he takes small time cases and hangs out with his ancient dog and gets occasional visits from his teenage son. He’s gathering intel on a cheating husband, cheating spouses being his bread and butter these days, when he comes across a man ready to end it all, a man who puts Brodie on a direct path to his past. This series is so good because Atkinson has created the perfect hero in Brodie, an ex soldier and cop with a tough exterior who also has a strong sense of right and wrong and kindness underneath his gruff exterior. Wonderful