Preview
  • Death at the Sign of the Rook

  • A Jackson Brodie Book
  • By: Kate Atkinson
  • Narrated by: Jason Isaacs
  • Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (130 ratings)

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Death at the Sign of the Rook

By: Kate Atkinson
Narrated by: Jason Isaacs
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Publisher's summary

THE INSTANT #1 BESTSELLER (SUNDAY TIMES, UK) • The highly anticipated return of "irresistible" (New York Times) private eye Jackson Brodie in the newest installment of the bestselling series hailed as "unputdownable" by Time

“How delicious to have Jackson Brodie back, this time in a story that starts off in Agatha Christie's world but soon becomes a landscape that could only have been crafted from the pen of the incomparable Kate Atkinson.”–Ian Rankin, author of the Inspector Rebus Novels

Welcome to Rook Hall. The stage is set. The players are ready. By night’s end, a murderer will be revealed.

In his sleepy Yorkshire town, ex-detective Jackson Brodie is staving off boredom and malaise. His only case is the seemingly tedious matter of a stolen painting. But Jackson soon uncovers a string of unsolved art thefts that lead him down a dizzying spiral of disguise and deceit to Burton Makepeace, a formerly magnificent estate now partially converted into a hotel hosting Murder Mystery weekends.

As paying guests, impecunious aristocrats and old friends collide, we are treated to Atkinson’s most charming and fiendishly clever mystery yet, one that pays homage to the masters of the genre—from Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers to the modern era of Knives Out and Only Murders in the Building.

©2024 Kate Atkinson (P)2024 Random House Audio
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What listeners say about Death at the Sign of the Rook

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Always a pleasure to read K. Atkinson

Jackson Brody, witty prose, multiple story lines that converge nicely at the end…what’s not to like?

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Big fan, but

I love KA, especially the Todd family books. The Jackson mysteries are good too, but this was disappointing. Perhaps this should be the end of them.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Jackson Brodie is back!!!

I enjoyed the farcical structure of the denouement, as well as Atkinson's insight into human nature.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

confusing time shifts

Great narrator can't save confusing story. Constant shifts between character scenes disrupted the flow if the narrative. And what was the point of the air tag which is mentioned twice and never seen again. Other actions by characters make little sense.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Meh

It reads like a series of disconnected short stories. Even the best narrator can’t make sense of this one. Very disappointing.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Not her best…

Mish-Mash of a plot. How many murder mysteries tropes can you cram into one novel. Kate can do so much better.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Not Atkinson's best

As a huge fan of Kate Atkinson, and especially her Jackson Brodie series, I was very excited about this new novel. It's still better than many detective novels but nothing like as assured and witty as the other books in the series. At a wild guess, and without wanting to know any of the details, I'd say the writer had some hefty personal problems to overcome while trying to write this book.
I think she originally tempted herself with the idea of tackling familiar, cliche'ed 'mystery' tropes - the Agatha Christie collection of characters, all verging on caricature, and all holed up together in a stately country home; murder room puzzles; Cluedo; the psychopath at large during a snowy night of black-outs; etc. But unfortunately she failed to paint the various pictures well or weave the plot threads together successfully. I'm still not sure why the murders happened!
And Jackson himself is only faintly and roughly sketched in, somewhat bent out of shape in order to make the plot lines work.
The best passages are those where she movingly evokes the Yorkshire countryside, similar to those I admire (adore!) in Dickens, particularly the opening section of Martin Chuzzlewit.
So I've just returned to Big Sky, a really brilliant book, where she does what few others can do: be witty, ruthlessly truthful and laugh-out-loud funny, while mourning for some of the awful things humans (especially men) do to other humans. Crystal is one of my favorite book characters ever.
Someone here said listen to Sign of the Rook at 80% speed and they were right. I listen to most books at 90% just to be sure of really hearing everything properly. I guess younger ears at Audible now expect things to rattle along like speeding trains. Jason Issacs obliges and does a grand job, but it's way too fast for me. Some of the good stuff needs to be contemplated, mentally explored, in order to be fully appreciated.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Great

Kate Atkinson at her best as you can imagine. Love Love Love Love Love this!

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Incredible audiobook

Fantastic book six in this fabulous series Jackson Brodie is witty and pragmatic and I enjoyed this book very much!

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Sweet, cozy, meandering mystery.

I loved the characters, and the plot(s). But, I found it a bit disjointed. However the performance was terrific. Each voice (I listened) was distinctive.

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1 person found this helpful