Big Sky

Finished August 6

Big Sky by Kate Atkinson

There was a long gap between the publication of the previous book in the Jackson Brodie series and this one. 

The book opens with a scene of Jackson helping a bride escape her wedding, It then jumps to events from a couple of weeks earlier, with two young Polish women being brought into what we can see is a human trafficking situation. It moves quickly on from there into the main body of the story which begins a week after that. 

Brodie is living in a seaside village in North Yorkshire and has his son Nathan staying with him for most of the summer as Nathan's mother Julia is busy on set for her television series, Collier's. He's also looking after Julia's aging Labrador, Dido. At the moment Brodie is working on a case where he is gathering proof of an unfaithful husband for a client, but he has a couple of encounters rescuing people from risky situations that bring him into contact with a darker criminal situation. 

There are parallel plots that end up intersecting at various points in the novel.

Four men who know each other, some better than others, play golf together and sometimes more. Thomas (Tommy) Holroyd runs a good transportation company, Andrew Bragg runs a travel agency, Stephen Mellors is a corporate lawyer, and Vincent Ives is a telcom-equipment area manager. Vince is a more recent member of the group, but he knew Steve years ago when they were young and saved Steve's life.

Tommy is married to his second wife Crystal, after his first wife died in a supposed accident falling from a cliff. His son Harry, from his first wife, is an interesting teenager who plays a key role in the plot, and daughter Candace is an infant. Andrew is married to , and they run a B&B together. Steve is married to Sophie and has two children, a teenage boy Jamie, and teenage girl Ida. Vince is married to Wendy and has a daughter Ashley who is on her gap year. Wendy has also recently asked Vince to move out as she doesn't want to be married to him anymore and he is now living in a pretty awful apartment on his own. Steve acted as his lawyer, but doesn't seem to have done a good job for Vince. 

Two young, but very capable female officers digging into old case files and notes about a man who is already serving time in a pedophile case. There was long suspicion that there was another man that they didn't get at the time, and DCs Reggie Chase and Ronnie Dibicki are thorough and persistent in their review of material and interviewing of potential witnesses. 

I really liked the Crystal who we see a good deal of. She's not well-educated, but she's smarter than she thinks, and a really good mom to both kids. I also liked Harry. He's got an interesting job that opens him up to different life experiences and a world he'd never imagined. He's younger than his age in some ways, and older in others. Vulnerable, with a hidden strength of character. 

The novel kept me wanting to read late into the night, and I loved how the plots developed and abutted each other on occasion before coming together dramatically near the end of the book. Well worth waiting several years for.