Kate Atkinson’s novels featuring Detective Jackson Brodie (DEATH AT THE SIGN OF THE ROOK is the sixth) always begin a bit off-kilter, and this one is no exception. The reader is introduced in short order to a group of people who have been instructed to gather in the library of an English manor house. The characters include Sir Lancelot Hardwick, Countess Voranskaya and American film star Guy Burroughs.

If this sounds a bit like a low-rent Agatha Christie novel, you’re on the right track. In fact, as readers soon suspect (and later learn for sure), these are personas in a live murder mystery game, hosted at an estate called Burton Makepeace, one wing of which has been (barely) renovated as a hotel, in an attempt to make some revenue for its down-at-the-heels owners, Lord and Lady Milton.

"Atkinson appears to have had a great deal of fun concocting what is, on one level, a delightful homage to Golden Age mystery novels while still being a very contemporary story, both in subject and in style."

But we’ll get back to that later. Much as Atkinson does in the book, let’s turn our attention to Jackson Brodie, who’s been called to a different, more modest home nearby. The grieving middle-aged children of a recently deceased elderly woman are perplexed by the disappearance of a potentially valuable painting that once hung in their mother’s house. The siblings are convinced that their mother’s caregiver --- who herself has gone missing --- is responsible for the theft. Jackson believes that there’s more to the story. As you might expect, he’s probably right.

For one thing, the case bears a strange similarity to the disappearance of another painting, possibly connected to another (or the same?) caregiver --- a Turner painting that used to hang at Burton Makepeace. Readers who are familiar with Jackson will know that he sets great stock in the significance of apparent coincidences, so as you might imagine, his investigation is soon off to the races.

This is just one strand of the multilayered narrative that ensues. It focuses on nearly a half-dozen characters whose lives increasingly intersect, culminating with their convergence on Makepeace House during one of the worst snowstorms in recent history, just in time for (you guessed it) the start of a murder mystery weekend. They include a local priest who has lost his faith, and his voice; a military veteran who has lost his leg; and Jackson’s one-time protégé, Reggie, who is now all grown up and a police officer in her own right.

DEATH AT THE SIGN OF THE ROOK is rife with puns, one-liners and allusions --- as well as an invented classic mystery writer, Nancy Styles, whose works run throughout the book and provide clues about characters’ motives and maybe even the thief’s (or thieves’) identity. It might be lighter in tone than some of Atkinson’s prior Brodie titles but is still recognizably part of the canon, including a cameo by a character who was a significant part of the earlier installments.

Atkinson appears to have had a great deal of fun concocting what is, on one level, a delightful homage to Golden Age mystery novels while still being a very contemporary story, both in subject and in style.