Part of Jackson Brodie
First published 2020
Jackson Brodie has moved to a quiet seaside village on the Yorkshire coast. His teenage son visits when Julia allows it. An old Labrador keeps him company. The work is ordinary: a wife suspects her husband, and Jackson is gathering evidence. It is the kind of job he has done a hundred times. Then a man appears on a crumbling cliff, frightened and clearly in trouble. That chance meeting pulls Jackson into a criminal network built on sex trafficking and exploitation. The cheerful coastal scenery does not change. The people running the network look like ordinary people. Some of them are. Running alongside Jackson's investigation is Reggie, the sharp and capable former police officer he first met years ago, now working a case of her own that is moving toward the same dark center. Their paths cross again, and the picture gets clearer and uglier. Kate Atkinson writes several families whose comfortable lives sit directly on top of terrible secrets. The novel moves between them with precision. What holds it together is not the plot mechanics but the human cost: what people do to protect themselves, and who gets left behind when they do.
Genres: literary-fiction, mystery, crime, contemporary, adult-fiction, thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, gritty, introspective, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: dual-investigation, interconnected-narratives, ordinary-people-extraordinary-circumstances, secrets-and-lies
Setting: Yorkshire coast, seaside village
Period: 21st-century, contemporary
400 pages · Paperback · Back Bay Books
Content warnings: sexual-assault, trafficking