Started Early, Took My Dog: A Novel by Kate Atkinson

Author:Kate Atkinson [Atkinson, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780316066747
Amazon: 0316066745
Publisher: Reagan Arthur / Back Bay Books
Published: 2011-10-06T07:00:00+00:00

At least he had learned his lesson, he was not going to be the foolish prey of boredom tonight. Instead he ordered something innocuous sounding on room service, no alcohol to accompany it, and when the food arrived he stretched out on the bed with his plate and picked up the remote.

Collier. Of course. Jackson sighed. Just when you thought it was safe to switch on the TV.

Collier was a rugged but occasionally sensitive detective inspector who worked in both a gritty northern town (‘Bradthorpe’) and a green farming dale (‘Hardale’). He frequently kicked against the traces of authority in the search for the truth and was invariably vindicated at the end. He was a maverick but (as someone said at least once in the course of every programme) ‘a brilliant detective’. He was unreliable towards women but they were, nonetheless, continually charmed by him. In his own experience, Jackson had found the exact opposite to be true, the more unreliable he was (usually from no fault of his own, he would just like to point out) the less impressed women were with him.

Julia, of all people, Julia, who had ‘given up acting to concentrate on being a mother and a wife’ (a declaration that no one, particularly not Jackson, believed), had recently been cast in Collier. Jackson had presumed she would be a corpse, or, at best, a bit-part barmaid, but it turned out that she was playing a forensic pathologist. (‘A forensic pathologist?’ He had been unable to disguise the disbelief in his voice.

‘Yes, Jackson,’ she said, with exaggerated forbearance. ‘I don’t actually have to have a medical degree or conduct post-mortems. It’s called acting.’

‘Even so . . .’ Jackson murmured.)

DS Charlie Lambert, an actress called Saskia Bligh, was Vince Collier’s glamorous (tough but fair, sexy but professional) sidekick. She argued, bullied, cajoled, sprinted and karate-kicked her way through the episode. She was a thin blonde with big, slightly weepy eyes and cheekbones that you could have hung washing on (as his mother would have said). Not Jackson’s type. (He had a type? What? The woman from last night? Surely not.) Saskia Bligh looked as if she bruised easily. Jackson liked his women to be robust.

Collier and Lambert. There were just the two of them, Morse and Lewis, Holmes and Watson, a double-handed duo that could solve every murder in the district with only a smidgeon of background help from semi-anonymous techies and uniforms. Jackson would like to see the pair of them work a case in the real world. Julia, in the shape of her character, existed to provide ‘a foil for their relationship’. ‘It’s not about crime, you have to understand,’ Julia said. ‘It’s about them as people.’

‘They’re not real,’ Jackson pointed out.

‘I know that. Art renders reality.’

‘Art?’ Jackson repeated incredulously. ‘You call Collier “art”? I thought rendering was what you did to dripping.’

‘You know what I mean.’

Julia was replacing a previous pathologist, a man. The actor playing him had been caught with child pornography on his computer and had been quietly transformed into a nonce in a prison somewhere.

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