"For those of you who do not know: Atkinson is one of the best writers working today, and her crime fiction, including novels featuring the now-retired Scottish inspector Jackson Brodie, rank among the finest." (The Washington Post)

"It's been eight years since Atkinson's last Jackson Brodie mystery, and, while the three historical novels she has written since then - all with some connection to WWII - have been uniformly brilliant, fans of the ever-brooding, painfully tenderhearted private investigator will be thrilled that Brodie is finally back.... Atkinson [has a] rare ability to create in a relatively few but stunningly deft brushstrokes at least a half-dozen characters with the depth and complexity to own their own novel. Another dazzler from a writer whose talents know no bounds." (Booklist, starred review)

"A small cast of characters collides and careens in a manner that straddles Greek tragedy and screwball comedy. The humour is sly rather than slapstick, and Atkinson is keenly interested in inner lives and motivations. There are villains, certainly...but even the sympathetic characters are complicated and compromised.... The deaths and disappearances that Jackson investigates change with every book, but the human heart remains the central mystery. The welcome return of an existential detective." (Publishers Weekly, starred review)