When Will There Be Good News?

I read the first two Jackson Brodie mysteries by Kate Atkinson so long ago {three or four years} that I unfortunately didn't remember too much about him, or them, except the Edinburgh setting, and that he was an ex-cop turned private investigator with an ex-wife (or two?) and a friendship or love interest with a woman detective. and that I liked the first two books enough to buy a copy of the third when I found it on a remainder table and to look forward to reading the fourth, once I finally got caught up with the third one. :)

Inspired by finding audiobook downloads of both for my Ipod, and being happy to see that the BBC adaptation of the Jackson Brodie books was going to be on Masterpiece Mystery in October {i.e., next Sunday} I finally did get to When Will There Be Good News, and I went to bed early two nights in a row and  kept my Ipod on when I got home from my long-overdue walk today just so I could finish it.

Oh, it was good!  Three separate stories are introduced, then twined together. Brodie takes a day trip from London to Edinburgh, with a secret purpose, while his new wife is away, and runs into a calamity on his way home; his friend, DI Louise Munroe, must tell two women that the killers who destroyed their families have been released from jail; and Reggie, a 16-year-old student and au pair, becomes suspicious when the cheerful, organized doctor she works for leaves on a sudden visit to an elderly aunt, leaving her cell phone and her car behind.

As everything is resolved at the end, I found myself (I feel stupid) literally saying, 'no, oh come on, oh no' at one point and thinking that the tying up of another loose end was a little gratuitous.  But this is definitely a series where the characters -- recurring and new -- are at the center, more than the mystery, and the next book is already queued up and ready for me.