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.

Last seen five years ago in Big Sky, Brodie, now in his sixties, has become a grandfather: the baby is named Niamh, after the sister whose murder decades ago propelled him into his life as a white knight. But there’s less emphasis here than usual on the damaging effects that Brodie’s dedication to his work has had on his relationships with his wives and children. In fact, this is the closest the series has come to an out-and-out romp. 

The feather-light central plot 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. There’s the awful, impoverished Miltons of Burton Makepeace (caricatural aristocrats, but Atkinson’s 2D characters are more memorable than many peers’ 3D ones); their faithless local vicar, whose shame at his hypocrisy has caused him to lose his voice and deliver his sermons in sign language; and another neighbour, an Afghanistan veteran nursing his physical and mental wounds in rural solitude. Eventually the whole cast convenes at Burton Makepeace for a violent and joyously demented denouement, during one of the murder-mystery evenings the Miltons have been reduced to hosting.

Occasionally, one can be irritated by Atkinson’s jibes not just at cosy crime but the formulas of the genre in general. Look, she seems to say, how I break the rules and fill my books with unlikely coincidences and illogical behaviour, and still produce something deep and involving. Then again, her sense of superiority would be justified. In this instance, at least, she has given us a novel of Horlicks-level cosiness that nonetheless offers fine writing, wit, originality and eccentricity – even as it induces a warm glow. 


Death at the Sign of the Rook is published by Doubleday at £22. To order your copy for £18.99, call 0808 196 6794 or visit Telegraph Books

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