Started Early, Took My Dog

With Dickensian brilliance, Kate Atkinson creates plots peopled with unlikely heroes and villains.

It's a day like any other for security chief Tracy Waterhouse, 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.

Witness to Tracy's Faustian exchange in the Merrion Centre in Leeds are Tilly, an elderly actress teetering on the brink of her own disaster, and Jackson Brodie, who has returned to his home county in search of someone else's roots. All three characters learn that the past is never history and that no good deed goes unpunished. "Yet another brilliant story from Atkinson. . . . A complex plot that works beautifully from start to finish . . . weaving an irrestistible tale that will keep you reading far into the night."

-The Globe and Mail

"Just as Case Histories, Atkinson reveals characters' inner lives with ease and deftly weaves together a warren of mysteries which spark other mysteries."

-The Independent (UK)

"Started Early, Took my Dog-with a wonderful title from Emily Dickinson, summoning a poet that is as artfully enshrouded as this novel-is . . . jampacked with echoes, parallels, doppelgangers, sneaky omissions, and authorial attempts to mislead. . . . Ms. Atkinson remains a wonderful stylist and Grade A schemer. . . . But she was never confined to the crime genre, has written in assorted other modes and excels at them all. Whatever she goes on to write, she leaves Jackson Brodie at a suspenseful and pivotal moment. Future installments are well worth waiting for."

-The New York Times



"Atkinson skillfully weaves . . . story lines together, creating an almost melancholy tale about the passage of time and the ripple effect of consequences of past acts. You don't need to have read the earlier Brodie books to keep up, and while this book is firmly rooted in the mystery genre, Atkinson's prose is so lovely, with startlingly keen observations and wit, even those uninterested in the solving of various whodunits will be spellbound."

-Entertainment Weekly

"Clues are carefully placed in a narrative of shocks and nasty turns. . . . Atkinson uses the conventions of the crime novel to provide a lurid vision of modern British life. . . . An ambitious, panoramic work, full of excitement, colour and compassion."

-The Sunday Times (UK)



"An irrepressible exuberance shines throughout. . . . Folds past and present together with Atkinson's customary flair. . . . Extraordinary combination of wit, plain-speaking, tenderness and control."

-The Guardian (UK)

"As ever, Atkinson's prose is diamond-cut to twinkle and slice by turns. Her playful sense of humour dances round the darkness of her themes. She skips through the difficult steps required to balance the reader's need for satisfying (and surprising) resolution with a realist's view of human nature and the messiness of real-life criminality."

-The Daily Telegraph (UK)

"The Brodie novels are twisting, turning, tangled narratives that leap from decade to decade, character to character, with secrets playing second fiddle to Atkinson's sad and funny studies in human nature. . . . Women of every age are drawn to Jackson. . . . It's terribly charming."

-The New York Times Book Review

"Accept Atkinson's vision; enjoy, admire, laugh and be moved . . . Atkinson is witty and satirical of modern mores; she is a virtuoso of dialogue."

-The Times (UK)

"[Here] the plot is as pleasingly intricate as ever and just as heavily populated with beautifully summed up characters. . . . The novel is all about the unraveling of [an] old case and its relation to present occurrences. Atkinson tells us what's going on with an imagination that keeps our minds reeling and our jaws dropping."

-Toronto Star

"Kate Atkinson has done it again: created an extreme