I read the first five Jackson Brodie mysteries back in 2019, and enjoyed them a lot, though by the end I was getting a little overdosed on Brodie’s world-weary cynicism and his inability to form and sustain meaningful relationships. I enjoyed the beautiful writing and the well-crafted mysteries, but I needed a break from the detective.

Maybe Atkinson did too, or maybe she was just busy with other stories. Anyway, Jackson Brodie is back, older and maybe wiser (still having difficulty maintaining relationships with women though, and still a little cynical) in this new mystery, which is an intricate puzzle-box of a story with a wildly misleading blurb.

If you read the book’s description, you will be given the impression that this story centres around a group of people who arrive at an English country house for a murder mystery game when a real murder occurs. This is a great premise, and it does happen in the book … but it happens at least 2/3 of the way through, maybe later. It’s really the climax of the story, which has been gradually building throughout the earlier chapters.

Unusually for Jackson Brodie, the mystery begins, not with a missing or murdered woman, but with an art theft, and a relatively low-stakes one at that — he’s not even sure it’s actually a theft. From there, various threads (and a wonderful cast of vividly developed characters) come together to create a mystery that is twisty, complicated, and hard to predict. I very much enjoyed reading this.