The feather-light central plot of Death at the Sign of the Rook has Brodie on the trail of an art thief whose acquisitions include a Turner nicked from Burton Makepeace, a Yorkshire stately home. But, as is standard for the series, the plot takes a back seat to the delicious character studies Kate Atkinson. Photo: Euan Myles Following the pandemic-induced and Richard Osman-led boom in “cosy crime”, several writers who might be described as “cosy-adjacent” have begun to make digs at it.
In Death at the Sign of the Rook , her sixth Jackson Brodie novel, Kate Atkinson becomes the latest, telling us that her PI hero refuses to read “old-fashioned, so-called ‘cosy’ crime...
He’d seen too much of the real stuff, and it wasn’t the least bit cosy”. Part of the strength of the Brodie books has always been the tension between their outlandish plots and their frequent sudden incursions into the reality of violence and grief. Again and again, Atkinson reminds us that women are fighting a constant war against what seems an ever-swelling army of misogynistic predators — though the invention of Brodie, dedicated to protecting them, makes the series more comforting than chilling.
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