Written by Kate Atkinson
Read by Nicholas Bell
Format: MP3
Unabridged

Started Early, Took My Dog' is the fourth novel in the bestselling sequence that started with 'Case Histories'. It again features the beguiling former detective Jackson Brodie, who was also seen in 'One Good Turn' and 'When Will There Be Good News?'.


Review from "Rhapsody in Books

This is the fourth novel featuring Jackson Brodie, a 50-year-old semi-retired private investigator who conjures up Kojak, for those readers old enough to remember him. [Kojak was an American television series airing from 1973 to 1978 starring Telly Savalas as Kojak, an older, attractive, charming detective - seemingly bumbling and incompetent, but although slow to see the light, eventually solving crimes because of his stubborn tenacity and willingness to bend the rules.]

This book is replete with plot conventions readers of Atkinson have come to admire and expect: stream of consciousness narration by a bevy of eventually interconnected characters; bemused and amusing contemplation of life’s quirkiness; a tribute to the ineluctable hand of fate determined, ironically, by accident and coincidence; myriad parallel plot themes mirroring one another as they crisscross through the story; and characters that serve as Greek choruses, drawing all the disparate themes together and anchoring them to a common ground.


The story begins with an abandoned child in 1975 found by two members of the police, including a female cop, Tracy Waterhouse, looking into a murder. This story alternates with the present day, and Jackson Brodie’s search for the birth parents of an adopted woman from New Zealand. We also follow what has happened to Tracy, who is now, like Jackson, also fifty, and like Jackson, searching for the meaning of her life. Jackson calls himself “an old dog looking for a new kennel.” Instead, he gets a new dog.

In the course of the story, we also revisit characters from previous books whose lives still intersect with Brodie in new ways. There are a great many characters and differing points of view, but because they are all interrelated, the story is not at all hard to follow