Book Review - Kate Atkinson's Death at the Sign of the Rook
Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson
Published by: Doubleday Books
Publication Date: September 3rd, 2024
Format: Hardcover, 320 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy
Things are looking good for Jackson Brodie. Some might question if he's going through a midlife crisis due to his purchasing a Land Rover Defender, but as long as the cases keep coming in it's all good. His newest case involves a missing painting, a portrait of a woman with a weasel with dodgy provenance. Dorothy Padgett had always keep the Renaissance painting in her bedroom. It hung in such a way that she could look at it only while lying in bed. To anyone visiting or just looking through her bedroom door you'd have no idea that the masterpiece was there. It is believed that Dorothy's carer, Melanie Hope, has walked off with it when Dorothy died. Dorothy's children, Ian and Hazel, want him to retrieve the painting without involving the police. But Ian and Hazel give off a weird vibe. It's almost like they're the perpetrators not the victims. Their mother wasn't murdered and it looked as if Melanie was left the painting in the will, so why go through this rigmarole? Could it be that the painting isn't just some painting but a lost masterpiece? Which means the provenance must be very dodgy indeed. Which raises Jackson Brodie's hackles. The sole clue left behind by Melanie is an old golden age detective novel by Nancy Styles, Hark! Hark! The Dogs Do Bark. In other words, not much to go on. So he'll have to rely on nosy neighbors. Or on a simply bizarre coincidence. Lady Milton lives in Burton Makepeace House. Her family has fallen on hard times so they're turning the Rookery into a destination hotel, Rook Hall, that will hold murder mystery weekends, the idea of her son Piers with his madcap scheme to become a hotelier. She doesn't like to think about it. Nothing has been right since her housekeeper, Sophie Greenway, left. Sophie was a pillar of strength that helped unite the small community, being the calm at the eye of the storm. Even Reverend Simon Smallbones considered her his dearest confidant. And then she was gone in the night. As was a Turner valued at over thirty million. All that was left behind was a Nancy Styles mystery, The Secret of the Clock Cabinet. Surely it had to have been the same perpetrator. Could a competent woman show up and fix people's lives and care for them only to fleece them out of valuable artwork? This would be a very long and complicated con. But it's the only answer that fits the clues. As a storm brews and all the parties involved are drawn to Burton Makepeace, along with an escaped convict on the moors, the truth will be revealed, but at what cost?
I've read two Kate Atkinson books and that's it. That's me out. She cares more about characters than plots and while I don't mind a character study a good book should be something more. So, if anyone is in need of an unread copy of Life After Life, it's going cheap. Death at the Sign of the Rook was sold as an homage to Golden Age Detection. It's not. It's so not. Because there is no detection. Yes, she does know about the conventions because she mentions them, repeatedly, and then proceeds to gleefully ignore them but will then randomly name-drop Mabel Mora before going off and discussing the vicar's lack of faith for the next fifty pages. Good for you, you know about Only Murders in the Building, much like everyone else in the world, now are we going to move beyond mystery catchphrases and jokes and actually have a murder or are you going to piss me off more with lame joked? Yes. To both. Eventually there is a corpse or two, but it's too little too late and there was no detection involved, which makes me wonder if she can actually write a murder mystery at all, because using the evidence before me I would say no. Snide remarks about the greats and groanworthy jokes, yes, she can do that. Actually write like the greats? Hell no. And as for the immersive murder mystery experience at Rook Hall? That doesn't start until three-quarters of the way through the book and it's almost like an afterthought that plays more like dinner theatre than an immersive experience. I feel like she doesn't understand the word immersive, but that's beside the point. Kate Atkinson would really rather be writing about the vicar than what was literally the selling point of this book. She has a manor house, displaced and dysfunctional aristocrats, actors, guests, a snowstorm, a killer escaped from prison, and she does nothing with this. They wander around the house for a while until the police stumble on the escaped prisoner and the art thief literally just tells Jackson Brodie what she was up to. He didn't catch her, he didn't catch anything, except for a possible midlife crisis given his new car, but you could literally remove Jackson Brodie from this "Jackson Brodie Book" and it would effect the plot not a whit. I think your book is profoundly flawed if the protagonist is literally unnecessary. And I think by this point my saying how much I hated this book is unnecessary, but I don't want to leave you in any doubt. This is a pan, much like this isn't a murder mystery.
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