I took the opportunity of airport paperbacks to buy Kate Atkinson’s latest Jackson Brodie crime novel, Death at the Sign of the Rook, on my way on holiday at the end of August last year (see my blog on Big Sky).

This draws on the golden age of crime fiction, playing on the classic butler did it plots of the country house mysteries when everyone is trapped inside due to the weather. Reading about the snowstorm that leaves everyone battling to get to Rook Hall was a little incongruous by the pool in thirty degrees, but no less enjoyable.

Jackson, former copper turned private detective, is hired by a dodgy brother and sister whose mother has just died (which they are not that upset about) and from whom a painting has been stolen, ostensibly by their mother’s carer, who has since disappeared. Jackson goes off on the hunt to find it, with his late-life-crisis Landrover Defender to help him. This leads him to draw on the help of former life-saver and partner in crime-solver Reggie, to see if this is not an isolated crime.

When the vicar loses his voice, a one-legged veteran finds a purpose and a body is left to chill in the pantry, it’s clear that the denouement of a money-spinning murder mystery weekend is not the usual one.

Delicious, as always.