Death at the Sign of the Rook - Jackson Brodie Series 06 (2024)

Welcome to Rook Hall. The stage is set. The players are ready. By night’s end, a murderer will be revealed. Ex-detective Jackson Brodie is staving off a bad case of midlife malaise when he is called to a sleepy Yorkshire town, and the seemingly tedious matter of a stolen painting. But one theft leads to another, including the disappearance of a valuable Turner from Burton Makepeace, home to Lady Milton and her family. Once a magnificent country house, Burton Makepeace has now partially been converted into a hotel, hosting Murder Mystery weekends. As paying guests, a vicar, an ex-army officer, impecunious aristocrats, and old friends converge, we are treated a fiendishly clever mystery - one that pays homage to the masters of the genre - from Agatha Christie to Dorothy Sayers. Brilliantly inventive, with all of Atkinson’s signature wit, wordplay and narrative brio, Death at the Sign of the Rook may be Jackson Brodie’s most outrageous and memorable case yet. The stage is set. Marooned overnight by a snowstorm in a grand country house are a cast of characters and a setting that even Agatha Christie might recognize a vicar, an Army major, a Dowager, a sleuth and his sidekick - except that the sleuth is Jackson Brodie, and the sidekick is DC Reggie Chase. The crumbling house - Burton Makepeace and its chatelaine the Dowager Lady Milton - suffered the loss of their last remaining painting of any value, a Turner, some years ago. The housekeeper, Sophie, who disappeared the same night, is suspected of stealing it. Jackson, a reluctant hostage to the snowstorm, has been investigating the theft of another The Woman with a Weasel, a portrait, taken from the house of an elderly widow, on the morning she died. The suspect this time is the widows carer, Melanie. Is this a coincidence or is there a connection? And what secrets does The Woman with a Weasel hold? The puzzle is Jacksons to solve.And lets not forget that a convicted murderer is on the run on the moors around Burton Makepeace. All the while, in a bid to make money, Burton Makepeace is determined to keep hosting a shambolic Murder Mystery that acts as a backdrop while the real drama is being played out in the house. A brilliantly plotted, supremely entertaining, and utterly compulsive tour de force from a great writer at the height of her powers. As requested, they had all assembled in the Library before dinner.