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It's a day like any other for Tracy Waterhouse, running errands at the local shopping center, until she makes a purchase she hadn't bargained for. One moment of madness is all it takes for Tracy's humdrum world to be turned upside down, the tedium of everyday life replaced by fear and danger at every turn.
Witnesses to Tracy's Faustian exchange are Tilly, an elderly actress teetering on the brink of her own disaster, and Jackson Brodie, who has returned to the land of his childhood, in search of someone else's roots. Variously accompanied, pursued, or haunted by neglected dogs, unwanted children, and keepers of dark secrets, soon all three will learn that the past is never history-and that no good deed goes unpunished.
Brimming with wit, wisdom, and a fierce moral intelligence, Started Early, Took My Dog confirms Kate Atkinson's status as one of the most original and entertaining writers of our time.
Rescues, one canine and several human, lie at the center of this clever new fiction by When Will There Be Good News? author Kate Atkinson. With stream of consciousness immediacy, she traces the parallel stories of a retired policewoman who adopts a young child and a detective who takes in an abused mutt. What begin as two spontaneous good deeds become intertwined, complicated, and then resolved with a fetching neatness.
British private detective Jackson Brodie, star of three previous Atkinson novels (When Will There Be Good News, 2008, etc.), finds himself embroiled in a case which shows that defining crime is sometimes as difficult as solving it.
Tracy Waterhouse, who is middle-aged, overweight and lonely, heads security for a mall in Leeds. Retired from the local police force, she remains haunted by one of her earliest cases, when she and her partner found a little boy abandoned in the apartment where his mother had been murdered days earlier. Although the murderer was supposedly found (but died before being brought to trial), Tracy never learned what happened to the child with whom she'd formed a quick bond. When Tracy sees a known prostitute/lowlife mistreating her child at the mall, she impulsively offers to buy the child, and the woman takes the money and runs. Tracy knows she has technically broken the law and even suspects the woman might not be the real mother, but her protective instinct and growing love for the little girl named Courtney overrides common sense; she begins arrangements to flee Leeds and start a new life with the child. Meanwhile, Jackson has come to Leeds on his own case. Raised and living in Australia, adoptee Hope McMaster wants information about her birth parents, who supposedly died in a car crash in Leeds 30 years ago. As he pursues the case, Jackson considers his relationships with his own kids—a troublesome teenage daughter from his first marriage and a young son whom DNA tests have recently proved he fathered with a former lover. Jackson's search and Tracy's quest intertwine as Jackson's questions make the Leeds police force increasingly nervous. It becomes clear that the 1975 murder case Tracy worked on is far from solved and has had lasting repercussions.
The sleuthing is less important than Atkinson's fascinating take on the philosophic and emotional dimensions of her characters' lives.
Started Early, Took My Dog is Kate Atkinson's seventh novel and the fourth to star private eye Jackson Brodie, survivor of a tragic childhood and much hapless love; seeker of lost people; and champion of the powerless. Melancholy, rueful, and obstinate, Jackson is one of the most appealing sleuths ever to tread the pages of a crime thriller, an appeal now sharpened by his new-found affinity for Emily Dickinson and heightened beyond all resisting by his having acquired a dog. Rescued by Jackson from an abusive yobbo, it is a little terrier, exuberant and joyously doggy one moment, thoughtful and attentive the next.
Turning from this excellent creature to the plot we find a superbly ingenious construction composed of the meshed repercussions of hidden crimes and cruelties, and a gradually revealed arabesque of intertwined lives. The book begins in 1975 in Leeds with the discovery of a starving child and the body of a murdered woman in a locked apartment. Called to the scene is Tracy Waterman, a solidly built policewoman, and her partner, Ken Arkwright, "a stout white Yorkshireman with a heart of lard." But no sooner is this event introduced, than the action sheers off, first to Jackson finishing off his last caper six months ago, and then on to the present where we find Tracy Waterman again, now in her 50s, retired from the police force and working as head of security at a down-market shopping mall. Surveying the commercialized ugliness of the place and the unhappy people who frequent it, she reflects, "All human life was here. Britain -- shoplifting capital of Europe."
Tracy's thwarted maternal instincts come to a boil as she observes an enraged woman, Kelly Cross, "prostitute, druggie, thief, all-around pikey," yelling into a cell phone while dragging a screaming little girl along at brutal speed. Inundated by "despair and frustration as she contemplated the blank but already soiled canvas of the kid's future," Tracy is seized by an impulse. "One moment she was…contemplating the human wreckage that was Kelly Cross, the next she was saying, 'How much?'" She flashes 3,000 euros she has just withdrawn from the bank. It's enough for Kelly, who grabs the money and drops the girl's hand. Tracy has just bought a child.
Tracy and her new charge set off in search of a new life -- pursued, soon enough, by mysterious trackers with, it would seem, evil intentions. So begins one extraordinary strain of the story. Another proceeds from the addled point of view of Tilly, a superannuated actress drifting in and out of senility. She has been playing the mother of the macho star of a TV soap opera, a role created to make the man seem "more human." But she has recently learned that her character is going to be killed off very soon, presumably because she can't get her lines down. This is only the beginning of the woes that fill Tilly's old head, all of them merging together, impressionistically, almost poetically, in her befuddlement.
The third major strand of the story proceeds from Brodie's point of view as he pursues a new assignment: finding the natural parents of a woman living in New Zealand who was adopted in England as a child. Although a few other characters contribute threads of consciousness to the narrative, Tracy's, Tilly's, and Jackson's points of view carry the story along, each accompanied by tart observations on the degraded condition of England and nostalgic laments for her vanished past: "No more half-day closing," reflects Tilly, contemplating the tawdry activity of the shopping mall through which Kelly is dragging her child. "Everything open all the time now, getting and spending we lay waste our powers. And where had all the money gone? You go to sleep living in a prosperous country and you wake up in a poor one, how did that happen?"
The novel is immensely exciting and very funny, even with all the sadness and badness it encompasses; and it is supremely devious in execution. Atkinson deploys past and present storylines in a pincer movement, marshalling seemingly miscellaneous actions and events into a coherent picture, one in which each character plays an often unwitting part. Atkinson really has no peer in the deftness with which she pulls this off; and it is a trick that goes beyond technique. As characters belonging to one narrative strand suddenly pop up in another, a surreal mood creeps into the novel. Indeed, these surprise involvements and coincidences begin to seem like evidence of an underlying current in the world, of some invisible struggle between good and evil, one in which the innocent are at once the most vulnerable and the most potent. This mood, which has a tincture of Arthurian romance about it, is an amalgam of whimsy and irony, and is uniquely Atkinson's.
The result is an intoxicating read. As the suspense and action intensify, as everything and everyone come hurtling together in the last pages, this particular reader was completely swept away by an exhilarating mix of dread and hilarity.
--Katherine A. Powers
Kate Atkinson's new book will leave you wanting more, positively! She's a wordsmith with a story that insists that we make moral choices we'd rather ignore.
One of her primary protagonists, Tracy, an otherwise "hard-nosed" member of the police force ...handling sexual offences, vice, human trafficking, and just about anything nobody else wanted to... is retired and wondering what to do with her life! Shopping on an afternoon at the local shopping center, she watches as an old druggie she recognizes from her days on the force, Kelly, appears to be dragging a tiny little girl and screaming at her. Tracy is drawn into the fray by instinct and curiousity. She follows Kelly, continuing to observe as she kicks at the child, screams at her to stop singing, dragging her through the crowds and down the street.
Since Tracy knows Kelly's other children have already been taken away from her, and that she obviously isn't "clean," she wonders what the freakish woman is doing with this little girl! When all is said and done, Tracy offers Kelly a chunk of money to "buy" the child from her. Kelly's eyes are wide with greed. The transaction is made...the child's hand is transferred to Tracy's, and Kelly rides off into the sunset on the local bus. However, not before she mouths something like, "But she's not....." And Tracy is left wondering what she's done...helped or kidnapped a child! A child who instantly become one she can't bring herself to part with!
Thus, begins this novel from the pen of Kate Atkinson. With a menagerie of lush, loveable characters complete with their particular idiosyncracies that only serve to make them more endearing, she has us captured from the get-go. Not only does she give us the quintessential darling, little urchin, but she also includes a scrappy little dog that was rescued from a snarling, abusive hood! Attention given not just to description but also to the quirkiness of inner thoughts and dialog; as well as to bucolic surroundings makes for a great deal of this author's genius. Plus, I wonder how she could have made the tension knot up inside me over that scruffy mutt!
Ms Atkinson seasons her novel with wit, perfect timing and a humor that will catch you off-guard when you least expect it. I found myself laughing and smiling often as I read this book. While she is astute and serious about her main and parallel storylines, and there is much to learn here with regard to morality and choices, her subtle, silver-handed delivery with its tinge of the obsurd is unique to her style. It's no wonder that she has won awards for her previous work.
Jackson Brodie, the soul searching, former private detective of "Started Early, Took My Dog," is a character featured in others of her books. His odd relationship with his ex-wife throughout the story is so charming. It has the qualilty both to madden and sustain him, making it a sadistic little treasure for the reader to enjoy in and of itself! I need to read more about him, absolutely.
Kate Atkinson is a writer of exceptional quality. I highly recommend reading her newest book, "Started Early, Took My Dog." It's an enjoyable read that goes well with a glass of wine, some Respighi (Ancient Dances and Airs Suite 2..) on low, and a comfy chair...sophisticated and easy on the heart.
Highly recommended without reservation.
Deborah/TheBookishDame
10 out of 12 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.goguins66
Posted March 31, 2011
Too many plot lines, too many characters, too much redundancy...by the middle of this novel I was completely frustrated by the lack of focus and every character's flashbacks. It felt like the author was throwing in every kind of writing style so people could think she was cutting edge. In any event, I found it messy and for the first time in a very long time, I stopped reading a book halfway through.
5 out of 9 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Kate Atkinson outdoes herself in this new novel featuring Jackson Brodie, private detective. He's back in England, doing some desultory checking on the parentage of a woman living overseas who had been orphaned in the 1970s. The story is braided with several threads, i.e., an aging actress suffering from dementia, a young child heavy "as a small planet," and several other retired police. Atkinson handles it masterfully, bringing it all to a neat knot in a train station. This is bad news for Brodie, as he has a nasty history with trains. The trenchant sense of humor for which Atkinson is known is on display and she describes with clear-eyed compassion and humor our ridiculous, and sometimes hideous, human condition. Motives and choices, the bobs and weaves of persons doing wrong, all have the ring of truth, as do the intentions and interventions of well-meaning, over-worked coppers on the beat. Set in Leeds, the story gives one a distinct sense of cold, cruel, rough, and distrusting. One wonders how anyone gets out of there with their psyche intact. Perhaps they don't, the author seems to say.
4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Frisbeesage
Posted April 28, 2011
Started Early, Took My Dog continues the saga of the perennially unlucky Jackson Brodie. No longer a police officer, no longer really a private detective, Jackson nonetheless roams the countryside looking for lost women. When he lands a rare client she is one of these lost women - her birth certificate comes up a fake, her biological parents don't exist and her adoptive parents are both dead. Who is this woman and why has her history been erased? As Jackson stumbles through his investigation he unexpectedly picks up a dog, The Ambassador, and still loses women left and right. It seems all he has to do is contact a female for her to disappear. He'll have to get ahold of one of them if he hopes to find any answers, but how? Meanwhile Tracy Waterhouse, a retired police officer, has had all the disappearances she can take. Determined to save one child from its fated course she will literally stop at nothing.
I absolutely love the Jackson Brodie series and each book is better than the last. Jackson is his usual fumbling, luckless, but well meaning and loveable self. He is still grappling with the long ago loss of his sister and seems fixated on finding lost women and children, even his fraudulent ex-wife. He manages to keep his dry and very funny sense of humor throughout his trials and I couldn't help but be entertained by the bad spots he gets himself into. As usual, what starts as a tangled ball of story lines neatly unravels to a single strand in the end. Kate Atkinson's writing is so sophisticated and sharp that these mysteries are elevated well above the norm. The characters are so realistic and human that you can't help but relate to them and love them despite their flaws. I only hope I get to read more about Tracy Waterhouse and Courtney in the next Jackson Brodie book. A true literary mystery, Started Early, Took My Dog is for anyone looking for a page turner that will engage your heart and your brain.
4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted March 31, 2011
I love Kate Atkinson's books because they mirror real life in such wonderful fashion: the weird, the fantastical, the tragic, the whimsical, all rolled into a beautiful literary package. Started Early, Took My Dog is no exception, and I was immediately captivated by Tracy Waterhouse and her story. Atkinson has such a wonderful eye for the tiniest of details--a child making "starfish hands" as she sings, the annoyed sigh of a very patient dog in a rucksack--that mesh with plot lines that collide in the most improbable (and frequently quite satisfying ways). Definitely an enjoyable read.
4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted April 28, 2011
... but that is what is fun about this book. You meet these interesting people who initially seem unrelated, and their stories gradually fuse into one in surprising ways. A lot of fun!
3 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted November 10, 2012
Great dective novel with literary allusions sprinked deftly throughout.
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted February 29, 2012
I'm reading my third novel by Kate Atkinson. She has a unique style,keeping the reader guessing as she ties together the seemingly totally unrelated pieces.
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.I didn't know Kate Atkinson until I watched "Case Histories" on our PBS station. Since then, I've read all of the Jackson Brodie series. This book, "Started Early, Took My Dog", was a little different from the first three.
For one thing, Jackson Brodie is not always the main focus. I like the fact that other interesting characters, some repeating from the other books, are filled out in this book. Some are left hanging, as is his propective love interest. Maybe Louise which come out in future books.
After watching the "Case Histories" pieces on PBS, which combined stories from the first three books, I was glad not knowing how the story would probably end. [You know how television writers like to change things.]
I hope Ms. Atkinson continues with Jackson Brodie. He sounds like someone I would like to know better.
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Posted October 1, 2011
I dont know why anyone wd think this series is slow. I find myself reading hurriedly because so much is in question. The author is British so u have to get her wit. I think she is great.
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Posted September 14, 2011
Jackson Brodie is now a private detective. He cares very deeply about the people he helps, but he is somewhat naive and easily waylaid by those very people I really enjoy the way Kate Atkinson writes. She has created a sympathetic character in Jackson, flawed though he is, you find yourself rooting for him to be successful not only in the cases he handles, but in his personal life as well...he does better on his cases. A smart, sometimes funny, somtimes sad , but always interesting character and the series about him is worth your time
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted June 28, 2011
I've loved all the books in the Jackson Brody series so far but this was unfortunately not as exciting as the first 3. It took awhile to get interested in what was going on and at that point I enjoyed the story but then it ended and it seemed like some questions weren't answered, dont want to spoil for anyone but it had to do with Tracy's storyline. Maybe that was the point, let us decide for ourselves, but in this case I'd have rather known than make it up in my mind.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted June 7, 2011
Another fun intriguing read from the mistress of interlocking stories. Loved it
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted May 30, 2011
A good read--contains lots of subtle humor. I've never seen a dog frown before, either.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted May 3, 2011
I thought it was horrible.
1 out of 6 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.This book so far is awful. So far I am on page 45 and I'm not sure if I can go any further. It just seems all over the place. Don't waste your money. If you must read wait until it comes out at your local library or better yet someone is giving it away at a yard sale. It's a painful read, not interesting at all.
1 out of 5 people found this review helpful.
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Posted April 9, 2011
good story but hard to find it
1 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Binker
Posted March 31, 2011
This book was awful, and for me....that is saying something. If you want to give it a try, good luck.
1 out of 7 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.RobertDowns
Posted May 9, 2013
This isn’t like any mystery I’ve ever read before, and I’ve probably read more than my fiscal allotment, devouring PIs of the hard-boiled and amateur variety, cozies, and police procedurals with reckless abandon, the way one might consume Cheez-Its on the living room sofa during an episode of The Office. So, naturally, I thought I had seen it all, and then this son of a gun came along, and I ended up scratching my head trying to fit STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG into a gift-wrapped box with a giant bow, painted in blood. And every time I’d squash it down, whether I used my hands, feet, or derriere, it’d pop back up, shake its head at me, and then let out a little chuckle.
I thought I was reading a mystery, but I was left dumbfounded throughout much of the first half of the book. About 17% into this tale (approximately 71 pages), I checked the novel’s genre on Amazon, because I had convinced myself that this wasn’t a mystery. I had plodded along happily with the characters, but it felt more like a character study of random individuals who had yet to intersect. At about 36%, or approximately 149 pages, it started to get a bit more interesting, but it wasn’t until 48%, or page 199, that a dead body was introduced. Even after the dead body, this novel still managed to toss a story structure curveball or two, and that was probably a good thing, especially if you’re standing at home plate quacking at the knees, after you’d just been buzzed by a 95 mph fastball.
Either that, or possibly a severe case of whiplash from being bounced between the past and present often enough to cause a rather extreme case of dizzy spells. I had trouble remembering the decade, let alone the year, tripping out of my mind to the point that rainbows appeared as a natural part of the landscape, and I saw roadrunners zipping across I-25 like tumbleweeds in the middle of a windstorm.
But I didn’t mind the dizziness, or the hallucinations, or the anxiety-filled moments, because there’s no question Kate Atkinson can spin a good yarn. Rumpelstiltskin would have to shut his fat lips, as an entire room filled with straw was turned into gold. And even though she may have broken the space-time continuum, this was one well-written tale that also happened to include a considerable amount of head scratching by yours truly.
Robert Downs
Author of Falling Immortality: Casey Holden, Private Investigator
Anonymous
Posted January 27, 2013
One of my favorite Jackson Brodie books! Atkinson is a master at interweaving stories who on the surface have no connection. Great read.
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Overview
It's a day like any other for Tracy Waterhouse, running errands at the local shopping center, until she makes a purchase she hadn't bargained for. One moment of madness is all it takes for Tracy's humdrum world to be turned upside down, the tedium of everyday life replaced by fear and danger at every turn.
Witnesses to Tracy's Faustian exchange are Tilly, an elderly actress teetering on the brink of her own disaster, and Jackson Brodie, who has returned to the land of his ...