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. Credit: 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 .