![]() ![]() ![]() That's the emotion that poleaxes Tracy Waterhouse, a 50-ish retired policewoman working mall security, when she spots a familiar "scrag-end of a woman," a local prostitute, dragging a 4-year-old girl through a crowd. This time around, Atkinson's theme is the appalling miracle of love, specifically the love that a grown-up person feels for someone much smaller, younger and more vulnerable. ![]() Can she really keep it up if Jackson's adventures stretch out ad infinitum, like those of Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch? ![]() Atkinson's Jackson Brodie books are like high-wire acts in which she is forever defying gravity (in the form of crime fiction's improbable conventions) by making the work fresh, unpredictable and alive. They are in some respects mystery novels, but they're written with a literary skill uncommon in that genre, and in a mode - the tragicomic - that few but the most adept novelists can pull off in any genre. Each one of these books, including this latest, is a delight: an intricate construction that assembles itself before the reader's eyes, populated by idiosyncratic, multidimensional characters and written with shrewd, mordant grace. "Started Early, Took My Dog" is the fourth of Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie novels (the others are, in order: "Case Histories," "One Good Turn" and "When Will There Be Good News?"), so there can be no doubt about it: We've got a series here. ![]()
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