Negotiating the hazards of parenting a teenager in the modern world would be challenge enough for Brodie, whose age is left deliberately sketchy (though basic maths suggests he must be close to a bus pass), but his son’s privileged existence is a constant reminder of his own youth: “By the time Jackson was 13, his mother was already dead of cancer, his sister had been murdered and his brother had killed himself.” Ten years since we left him, now living back in his native Yorkshire, Brodie’s solitary existence has been interrupted by the arrival of his 13-year-old son, Nathan, for the summer holidays. Now, after three books set during the second world war (the Costa winners were followed by Transcription in 2018), Atkinson has returned to Brodie and a very contemporary theme: the sexual exploitation of women and children. In the intervening years, Jason Isaacs has brought him to brooding life on screen in the BBC series Case Histories, named after the first Brodie book, and his creator has produced her most acclaimed historical novels, including Life After Life and its sequel, A God in Ruins, both of which won the Costa Novel award. I t’s nearly a decade since Kate Atkinson’s gruff private detective Jackson Brodie last appeared in print.
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