Murder, chaos and joy in Kate Atkinson’s “Death at the Tower”

When reading a novel, we sometimes get an impression not only of the characters’ feelings, but also of the author’s.

Some novels seem to have been written in anger, others are written out of grief or passion. And sometimes you get the feeling that the author is just fulfilling a contract.

“Death at the Sign of the Rook” by Kate Atkinson feels like joy.

On every page I had the feeling that Atkinson had a lot of fun writing it. A gripping crime novel that is at once a loving parody of the cozy crime genre and a brilliant demonstration of literary skill, and a joy for the reader too.

Atkinson, an English writer living in Scotland, has had a distinguished career spanning three decades, including award-winning literary novels – she is the first person to win the UK's prestigious Costa Book Award three times – and a bestselling crime series about Yorkshire-born detective Jackson Brodie.

The first of these films, Case Histories, was released 20 years ago and is also the title of the BBC series starring Jason Isaacs as Brodie.

Death at the Sign of the Rook is her sixth book about the private investigator, a former soldier and policeman who has developed a tough shell and a compassionate heart because of his terrible childhood.

Brodie is now “over sixty” and a grandfather, but he hasn't changed much. After deciding to buy a house, “he spent several weeks trying to be sensible and grown-up, and then he bought a Land Rover Defender instead. It was a sturdy, manly vehicle.”

His personal life is as chaotic as ever. The disembodied voices of his ex-girlfriends and other female characters live on in his head in the form of what he calls the “Court of Women,” which regularly criticizes him.

His current girlfriend is Tatiana, who has an “unconventional resume – confirmed dominatrix, suspected assassin, former trapeze artist. … Tatiana was wild and approaching her was like snuggling up to a tiger.”

Jackson may not make the best personal decisions, but he's better at solving other people's problems. At the beginning of “Rook,” he's interviewing two new clients.

Twin siblings Hazel and Ian Padgett recently lost their mother. They do not believe her death is a mystery; Dorothy Padgett died in her bed in the peaceful village of Ilksley at the age of 96.

They're already dividing up Dorothy's knickknacks, but something is missing: a small portrait, an oil painting of a woman. They say they don't know who painted it, although they believe it's from the Renaissance and that her late father bought it for pocket change at an estate auction.

It hung behind Dorothy's bedroom door for decades. It's not really valuable, the twins assure Jackson, except for sentimental reasons. But they want it back and are sure it was taken by Dorothy's caregiver, a warm, competent young woman named Melanie Hope – who seems to have disappeared in the few days since Dorothy's death.

Jackson is fascinated by a photograph of the painting, which shows a beautiful young woman with “red-gold hair covered by an almost transparent veil.” She holds an animal that could be an ermine on her lap. “She looked,” Jackson thinks, “as if she might know something you didn't.”

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He doubts not only the twins' somewhat rehearsed story, but also their assessment of the value of the portrait. So he throws himself into the case.

It turns out that another painting is missing from another house nearby. It is a very different work of art – a large painting by JMW Turner, “Sunset over Fountains Abbey”, which was cut from its frame and removed around the time that a warm, competent young housekeeper named Sophie Greenway suddenly quit her job a few years ago.

It is missing in a completely different type of house: Burton Makepeace, “one of the most important stately homes in England”, or at least it once was. Now the huge country house with its countless rooms is falling apart around the ears of the financially troubled Milton family.

And if this all starts to sound like an Agatha Christie novel, that's intentional. Atkinson soon introduces us to a cast that seems straight out of Christie: the quirky aristocrat Lady Milton, her sleazy sons Piers and Cosmo and their horse-mad daughter Arabella, the clueless vicar Simon Cate, the manly war veteran Major Ben Jennings.

To make ends meet, Piers, much to his mother's dismay, has converted Burton Makepeace into a hotel, and much of the book takes place there during an interactive murder mystery event featuring a troupe called the Red Herring Players.

Atkinson sprinkles sly jokes like rose petals and makes references to every detective, from Sherlock to Poirot to Columbo to Robert Langdon.

She also does something Christie didn't: she builds complex characters. All credit goes to Agatha as the godmother of the crime novel, but her characters were mostly genteel cartoons.

Atkinson gives her characters life and breathing, equipping them with compelling backstories and, in some cases, a hilarious sense of humor. (I could read a whole book about the shamelessly snooty Lady Milton. She can't stand watching Downton Abbey because she thinks the Crawleys are too chummy with the servants.)

Of course, a classic detective needs a sidekick, and luckily for us, Atkinson brings back Reggie Chase, who readers first met in 2008's When Will There Be Good News? as a teenage babysitter who became embroiled in a murder.

She's now a police detective who's been working on the missing Turner case. When her path crosses with Jackson's again, he's delighted – he sees her as a daughter, and one with far more promise than his own surly offspring – and she's annoyed. But she can't resist working with him.

In Atkinson's gifted hands, it's a wonderful mix of Christie crime, the wry and knowing Knives Out films, and more. Despite the chaos, Atkinson remains in control every step of the way, right up to the final meta twist. What a joy!