CRIME FICTION
Death at the Sign of the Rook
Kate Atkinson
Doubleday, $34.99
Between the First and Second World Wars there flourished a wave of crime fiction that came to be known as the Golden Age. Dismissed by Raymond Chandler for its lack of realism (Chandler preferred Dashiell Hammett), the formula often involved a country house and a cast of upper-class characters nobody liked and a private detective they did. This is where the clever Kate Atkinson comes in, slyly adopting the familiar tropes while transforming them into what is both a hilarious spoof and a vastly entertaining read.
Kate Atkinson’s new novel is wicked fun.Credit: Helen Clyne
It begins with an invitation to a Murder Mystery Weekend at the “charmingly atmospheric” Rook Hall. There follows a vignette right out of The Mousetrap playbook with the Major, the Reverend, the Countess and the Butler assembled in the library after dinner. But there’s a new addition to the audience, Jackson Brodie, Atkinson’s acerbic PI who first appeared in Case Histories in 2004, and he’s not amused.
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Jackson is watching a performance enacted by a troupe of actors employed for the Murder Mystery fun and games that will play a farcical role in the final stages of the plot within the plot. This involves the disappearance of a Renaissance painting (provenance unknown) from the wealthy home of the recently deceased Dorothy Padgett. Brodie has been employed by Dorothy’s twin progeny (whom he instantly dislikes) to locate the painting, which they suspect has been stolen by Dorothy’s carer, the mysterious Melanie Hope.
While the structure is elaborate, that’s not the true strength of Atkinson’s writing. Even more wonderful are the characters, their backstories, and their take on the increasingly bizarre events as they unfold. Jackson, for example, is entirely distracted by loving thoughts of his new Land Rover Defender, which he thinks he could probably live in if he had to. Regrettably, the whole “macho construct” has been slightly undercut by his granddaughter’s baby seat in the back. Nevertheless, Jackson is going to learn a lot as he tracks down the “Lady with a Weasel”, as he refers to the missing masterpiece.
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Also missing a painting is Lady Milton, another intricately drawn character who prefers her black labradors, Tommy and Tuppence, to any of her children or her late husband. Nor is she particularly in favour of son Piers’ attempts to rescue the family’s fortunes by opening their vast crumbling pile as a hotel. They’ve already sold a Rembrandt, a Titian and a da Vinci sketch to pay the taxes, but someone has made off with the Turner. Not an art lover, Lady Milton rather regrets the loss of the latter since it represented something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. “Beauty, perhaps.”
Atkinson’s take on the requisite vicar is both funny and oddly touching. Poor Simon Cate has lost his faith in God and prefers blessing the pets to preaching to his parishioners. He therefore spends a lot of time in the deer park looking for flint arrowheads and musing on his choices in life. And then there’s the handsome major, Ben Jennings, who lost a leg in Afghanistan and is clearly suffering from PTSD. Ben is now living with his kind vet sister, Fran, and her wife, George, who doesn’t talk much. He chops a lot of wood.
After such character diversions, there’s a fabulous finale. Having navigated a snowstorm (shades of The Mousetrap once again), the “real life” characters assemble at Rook Hall for the final Murder Mystery performance when all will be revealed about the missing paintings. Oh, how could I forget, there’s also a murderous escaped criminal on the loose. It’s all such wicked fun.
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