I spent last week in upstate New York dog-sitting and I thought that between the train rides up and back and the quiet of the country I would get a lot of reading done. Instead, I watched a Mission Impossible movie every night for five consecutive nights and I couldn't tell you what happened to any other downtime I had while I was away. I cooked. I walked the dog. I did some crossword puzzles. I worked some long days. I read a few chapters of a book I had high hopes for but wasn't feeling at the moment. I did not trade it for either of the other two books I had brought with me. When I arrived back home on Saturday night,
Big Sky was waiting for me, having been delivered while I was away. I've read and enjoyed all the previous Jackson Brodie novels, and I loved the three non-Jackson Brodie novels by Kate Atkinson that I've read, so yesterday - with the prospect of a lazy day at home after a week away - I decided to start
Big Sky.
This book satisfied in the ways that I expected it to. I read more than 200 pages yesterday and nearly as many today. The book has a sometimes confusing jumble of characters circling around a sex trafficking ring, the unraveling of which happens partly by accident. The reader gets the full story, but most of the characters never do. The closure sates. What was lost on me this time were all the callbacks to the earlier books, which I only remember faintly now. I read them all in the space of a year in 2015-2016. I remember some rough plot outlines and a few details, but not much really. There were characters in this book who figured in the earlier novels, but I didn't remember them at all. I don't know that it would be worth going back and re-reading all four prior books, but I think I would have enjoyed Big Sky more if I had.
