Not Even Kate Atkinson Can Capture the Evil of Sex Crimes
When asked several years ago to name the question she gets most frequently from her fans, the English novelist Kate Atkinson replied without hesitation, “When is Jackson Brodie coming back?”
Were Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable still up and running, this question would surely be the definitive example of looking a gift horse in the mouth.
Atkinson has published 12 books of fiction, four of them featuring Brodie, her police officer turned private detective. At the time she fielded the question above, she had just published Life After Life, one of this century’s best novels (OK, going for broke here: any century at all).