Tower and Town, August 2024 (view the full edition)A Good ReadEvery now and again I contemplate throwing in bookselling and running away to sea. But just when I think "Hang Spring Cleaning" (or stocktaking), or that I should consider Walking Out One Midsummer Morning, or deliberately stepping into the street and methodically knocking people's hats off, I realise my work is not done, because someone says all innocent-like "I've never read Kate Atkinson". And I take a deep breath and return to my vocation of spreading the word. Kate Atkinson has 24 national and international awards to her name, and has asked her publishers not to submit her for any more prizes (I presume her mantlepiece is full and she doesn't want to do any more dusting.) She writes (for the uninitiated) 'literary' but immensely readable novels, and a 'literary' but immensely entertaining crime series, featuring the utterly lovely Jackson Brodie. Described as crime novels for those who don't read crime, the JB books are adroitly constructed and plotted, occasionally slightly bizarre, undeniably grim in subject matter but jauntily entertaining. At the Sign of the Rook is on the face of it an homage to Agatha Christie and the country house mystery, with the archetypal characters - chatelaine of crumbling mansion, ex-soldier, vicar, suspects and sleuth trapped by a blizzard, with the theft of an Old Master to investigate, and murder afoot. But Atkinson of course subverts the tropes and expectations, and gives us a digressive, slightly disorientating narrative, in which as ever with Jackson Brodie the moral rather than the strictly legal is the outcome he works toward. He's in a good place, our Jackson which is nice, and has a new Great Love - sorry ladies, it's a Land Rover Defender, we can't hope to compete..... Dark Frontier by Matthew Harffy has it all as far as I'm concerned, troubled hero with a past in the Afghan wars and C19th Whitechapel (hints of you-know-who, slight yawn) now hoping to start anew in Oregon. I'm less than a third of the way in, and the body count is rising, shoot-outs in the saloon and ornery villains tracking our hero through the mountains. Finally I'm excitedly hopping from foot to foot like a small child who should have gone before she left home. Lissa Evan's new novel Small Bomb at Dimperley is a joy, and she's coming to the shop to talk about it on 5th September (publication day). Take this opportunity to tone up your sitting- still- and- being- entertained -and- enlightened muscles before the marathon of LitFest. Tickets (£5) from the White Horse Bookshop. Debby Guest |