Started Early, Took My Dog: (Jackson Brodie)

Crime has given Atkinson the freedom to write an ambitious, panoramic work, full of excitement, colour and compassion

Sunday Times

Atkinson's finest novel to date. Indeed, it's one of the finest British novels, in any genre, to have emerged for years...sharp and dexterous, subtle and stylish, very funny and at time extraordinarily cutting...This is very much a state of the nation novel - far sharper and more observant and satirically understanding than anything else out there at the moment. And yet Atkinson also gives us humanity, insight and entertainment...a story that deserves to be read for decades to come

Henry Sutton - Mirror

The wonder of Atkinson's novels has been their joie de vivre, extraordinary given the high incidence of violent death. An irrepressible exuberance shines throughout..folds past and present together with Atkinson's customary flair...extraordinary combination of wit, plain-speaking, tenderness and control

Guardian

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

Daily Telegraph

A wonderful stylist...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

Janet Maslin - New York Times

I can't think why it has taken me so long to discover Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie novels. Started Early, Took My Dog is the fourth and is so brilliant that I rushed out and bought the previous three. Lauded for her literary fiction, Atkinson has taken to writing crime with ease, skilfully weaving the lives of three characters into a complex tale of murder, child abduction and corruption

Emma Lee-Potter - Daily Express

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

The fourth Jackson Brodie book, Atkinson's unlikely but utterly addictive detective...If only more literary authors could turn their hands to readable, commercial fiction with such elegance and verve

Red

My friends queue up to borrow advance copies of Kate Atkinson's books...The book is full of allusions, illusions and conclusions about life, the universe and everything...original and amusing

Literary Review

Readable, compassionate and very funny...too good to miss

Spectator

Started Early builds into a state-of-the-nation novel that delicately balances bleak cynicism and affecting humour...She's also not averse to having fun with the genre she's adopted - her affectionate swipe at TV detective series is even funnier since the announcement of a BBC adaptation of previous Brodie novel Case Histories

Metro

Manages to sashay a fine line between comedy and tragedy, malignancy and lightness of touch...A stellar cast, the sophisticated plotting we've come to expect, and an incendiary denouement...hypnotic, compulsive reading, the result more bright fine lines of literary cocaine from Kate Atkinson

Scotland on Sunday

A funny, savvy, surprising sort of writer

Psychologies

Atkinson's detective novels capture the strangeness of modern times, and our supposedly atomised lives, with spiky wit, emotional intelligence and consummate cleverness...Above all, they scrutinise an England too few literary novelists seem to notice, or care about

Amanda Craig - Independent

Beautifully written...possibly the only author writing crime fiction that is also literary fiction alive today and as such she is also far and away the most interesting. Jackson cannot return soon enough

Sunday Express

Superbly suspenseful storytelling, weaves missing children, romantic trauma and professional misconduct into a riveting read

Sainsbury's magazine

Consider yourself in the hands of a most assured master - with a canny sense of humour

Time Out

Intricately plotted, mixing humour with pathos, and bubbling with ideas, this is a thriller with the momentum of a runaway train

Mail on Sunday

Reunites us with curmudgeonly private detective Jackson Brodie, who this time is sucked into a tale of child abduction, murder and police corruption. Atkinson's spiky wit, exuberance and delight in outlandish coincidence means a novel with pressing state-of-the-nation concerns also revels in a playful sense of whimsy

Metro

Another sharply observed piece of storytelling

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