Catherine Raynes: Death at the Sign of the Rook and Safe Enough

Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson 

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 widow’s carer, Melanie. Is this a coincidence or is there a connection? And what secrets does The Woman with a Weasel hold? The puzzle is Jackson’s to solve. And let’s 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. 

 

Safe Enough by Lee Child 

From the world's number one thriller writer, twenty pulse-pounding short stories are collected for the first time in one edition, complete with an introduction from the author plus an exclusive brand-new short story featuring Jack Reacher and Maggie Bird from Lee Child and Tess Gerritsen. 

I was the guy who always found a way. 

I was the guy that couldn't be stopped. 
 
A drug-dealing hit man unburdens his fears to a stranger. An overlooked rookie cop is assigned to the department’s file room. A ruthless killer only kills bad guys. A methodical bodyguard quits his job when he’s outsmarted. A military mission is planned to perfection... 
 
Meticulously plotted and utterly compelling, these are intimate portraits of humanity at its best and worst. Each story is entirely distinct. And with their economical prose and unexpected twists, each could only have been written by the creator of Jack Reacher. 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from Newstalk.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
ZEDB nineteen to twelve on news talk EDB. Two new
books have taken the attention of our book reviewer Katherine Rains.
This week she's with us. Now, Hey, Catherine, Morning Jack.
Let's start with Death at the Sign of the Rook
by Kate Atkinson.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
So this is one of those cozy mystery series and
this book has a cast of weird and wonderful characters
along with a crime or two. And this is the
sixth book in her Jackson Brodie series. And in this one,
Dorothy Paget dies and Jackson is asked by her twins
Hazel and I to look for a painting that's missing
from her bedroom. And it happens to be a Renaissance
air portrait and they claim that they don't know what

(00:48):
it's worth and they just want it back for sentimental reasons.
And they have surmised that Dorothy's Kira, a woman called
Melanie Hope, took it when she left, but they don't
want to involve the police. And Jackson's has you know
that tingling at the back of the spine where there's
something decidedly shifty about the pair of these, but he
checks into it anyway, and he discovers that on his
phone as a burner, and he checks out her address,

(01:08):
which happens to be fake, and the painting's prominence is
a bit dodgy as well. And then he does a
little research into art theft and he finds some interesting
cases and some other thefts, and one from was from
a place called Burton Makepeace House, which was the home
of Mark West and March s Milton and the DC
a guy called Reggie Chase had investigated this without success.

(01:29):
So Jackson goes and it has a chat to him
and is there a connection between the two thefts? And
the plot has a bit of a feel of an
Agatha Christie about a stately home. There's aristocrats, there's missing
but works. There's a biggar who's lost the power of speech,
a group of actors who are putting on this murder
mystery weekend, and of course there's a snowstorm and thus
snowed in. So yet that closed and feeling about the book.

(01:51):
There's some serious themes that she tackles as well, about
grief and loss and post traumatic stress disorder. But there's
lots of humor too, and great dialogue and British characters
with their very dry black humor, and her strength is
really in the characters and the monologues. And so you
get this clever book with different characters and storylines that
all link together and it's fast faced and fun and

(02:12):
you know, like that golden age of crime writer and
I really.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
Enjoyed it very good. Okay, that's Death at the Sign
of the Rook by Kate Atkinson. Go on, then tell
us about Lee Child's latest safe Enough.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
So this is actually a collection of twenty short stories,
and you move away from a Lee Child's very well
known character of Jack Creature and focus on a number
of individual situations. So you get lots of themes and
time periods and perspectives and cos Lee Child has a
very good gift for story telling, and so he spins
stories about FBI agents and failed bodyguards and the od

(02:43):
drug dealer or two, and everybody making their way in
the world and trying to give their life a sense
of purpose. And so there's really something for everyone, like
about that investigating and perpetrating crime and in which side
they fall on, and those time periods, and it's stories
like the Bodyguard, which is a political kidnapping, and safe Enough,
which is an electrician who becomes involved in a missing
person's case, and normal in every way, a young police

(03:07):
file ax like this database putting pieces of the crime together,
and managers set in the fifties, so before computers could
do or before you could google everything, and so, and
then you get some without that sort of thriller and
well known sort of violent side that check Rereacher has.
And there's a couple with a writer as a protagonist,
which is interesting, and one of them is called Dying

(03:27):
for a Cigarette. And with all of these there's a
twist in each story, and you can often be surprised
by what the twist turns out to be and what
the payoff is. But one of the really interesting parts
of this book is right in the beginning in the prologue,
Lee Child talks about his writing career and how this
collection came about and some interesting antidotes and you know,
and why he's written these stories over the years, and

(03:48):
you know, he really is a well crafted short story writer.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
Yeah, fantastic. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to that. It's
something a bit different from Lee Child too, which sounds
really exciting, so thank you, Catherine. That's Safe Enough by
Lee Child. That first book was Death at the Sign
of the Rook by Kate Atkinson. Of course, all the
details for those books will be up on our websites
right now.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
It's quarter for more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame.
Listen live to news Talks ed B from nine am Saturday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.