Big Crimes

Big Sky, Kate Atkinson

While we're probably overdue a standalone Atkinson novel that's not from one of her two ongoing series, it's always pleasing to crack open one of her Jackson Brody books. And Big Sky doesn't disappoint.

Though set largely around Scarborough and Whitby, and their fading seaside glories of tourist traps and out-of-time variety shows, Big Sky doesn't move very far from its familiar territory of connected crimes and Brody's quiet heroism. But it expertly blends in 2010s-relevant themes of people-trafficking, celebrity sex offenders, child-abuse and even, though subtly, Brexit. And does all these justice, and with a seeming effortlessness from Atkinson, that makes for a comfortable sort of challenging. She doesn't dwell on any salacious details of the crimes - as other, more questionable realms of the genre might - but equally doesn't leave the reader in any doubt about the depravity behind them. With Brody, Atkinson has a foil with which she can go dark while retaining a clear, positive morality, and with a degree of lightness, as her detective quips glass-half-empty asides on life and the damaged lives he sees around him.

It's very interesting to read this immediately after Belinda Bauer's Rubbernecker. There's a lot of superficial overlap (multiple viewpoints, connected crimes, grimly humourous), but both writers manage to retain their own distinct voices. Possibly Atkinson differs because, for all her weariness of human frailties, she remains more empathetic to her characters and their often circumscribed lives. In any case, for a reader, it's fantastic to have two such talents going at the same time. Roll on their next forays.

Autistic Detective

Rubbernecker, Belinda Bauer

Easily the best crime novel I read last year, and probably for the last couple of years, Snap by Belinda Bauer was a propulsively enjoyable ripped-from-the-headlines yarn, with marvellous characters and a pitch-black sense of humour. Bauer came to our attention, and I expect many other people's, when Snap was included in the longlist for the Booker Prize. But it was just the latest in a line of her books, of which Rubbernecker demonstrates that its brilliance wasn't a one-off.

Similarly borrowed-from-the-front-pages, it centres around Patrick, an anatomy student in Wales, living away from home and dealing with the challenges of Asperger's Syndrome. Not that Patrick quite sees things that way - it's everyone else who's making all the simple things complicated (including his struggling, and now somewhat distant, mother). Instead, Patrick is focused on the exercise, together with a group of fellow students, of dissecting "Bill", their corpse for the semester, and something of a conundrum. "Bill's" cause of death is alluding them all, but a chance discovery by the preternaturally-focused Patrick sets him off on a chain of investigation away from the dissecting table. One that's unwarranted as far as his university is concerned, annoying for his fellow students, and which attracts unwelcome attention elsewhere as Patrick homes in on what really happened to "Bill".

Much as with Snap, this is a headily enjoyable read. Bauer is just excellent at drip-feeding the plot such that "just one more chapter ..." becomes a run of them. Her character sketches really help again, with a well-drawn cast of engaging and sympathetic characters, balanced with some frequently comical wrong-uns. Inevitably, one can't avoid some comparison with Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, but Bauer's handling of Patrick is confident and Rubbernecker doesn't suffer. It helps that it doesn't turn into a heart-warming tale of Patrick's normalisation. The only bit of a misstep it takes is with the rather late-stage (and, arguably, tangential) revelations about his family - there needed to be something here, but this was a bit of an overlarge something for me.

Anyway, zero qualms in recommending this excellent read.