[Fiction – 2006]
A road rage incident is witnessed by a queue of people outside a lunchtime show at the Edinburgh Festival. The novel weaves together the seemingly disparate stories of some of the witnesses, all increasingly interlinking as the narrative unfolds.
The characters themselves at first, each in their seemingly disjointed and episodic narratives, all seem like typical thriller stereotypes. There is the wife of an unscrupulous and unfaithful property developer, a wimpish crime writer, a single-mother policewoman with a son on the verge of villainy, and Jackson Brodie: ex-army, ex-police, ex-private-eye and – at first – almost a walking cliché.
However, Atkinson, with deft touches of characterisation, breathes life and credibility into these various characters and weaves together the stories wittily and masterfully, akin to the set of nested Russian dolls that feature in the narrative. Atkinson creates a novel here that succeeds both as a thriller and as a study of character through emotional drama that would put many a so-called ‘literary novel’ to shame.
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