Like a great city, the mystery genre is home to many different communities. There are police procedurals, locked-room teasers, hard-boiled detective yarns and the soothing small-town cozies you find on Acorn TV. One of the merrier neighborhoods is that of the meta-mystery — PBS’ Magpie Murders series is a great example — whose creators don’t simply tell a story. They lean into the artificiality of mysteries, highlighting and sometimes laying bare the gambits and tropes that keep us reading.
The latest arrival in this neighborhood is Death at the Sign of the Rook, the sunny sixth entry in Kate Atkinson‘s addictive series about Jackson Brodie, a sometimes saturnine private detective with a German shepherd’s keen eye for abuse. Last time out, in Big Sky, Brodie cracked a child molestation gang in a tale that recalled the real-life case of BBC entertainer Jimmy Savile. Perhaps because that story was so grim — too nasty, really, for Atkinson’s generous style — she’s made this latest installment a lark. The book flirts with, and tweaks, Golden-Age mysteries like those of Agatha Christie.