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Started Early, Took My Dog    by Kate Atkinson Amazon.com order for
Started Early, Took My Dog
by Kate Atkinson
Order:  USA  Can
Reagan Arthur, 2011 (2011)
Hardcover, CD, e-Book

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* *   Reviewed by Lyn Seippel

Tracy Waterhouse witnesses a prostitute abuse her child in a public mall and ends up buying the child. Jackson Brodie watches a man beat a dog in a public park. He punches the bully and takes the dog.

Tracy, a retired police officer, works security for the mall and Jackson, also retired police, is a private investigator. Their lives are on a parallel courses, but it will be a while before they meet.

Atkinson's book begins in 1975 with Tracy as a young cop, and jumps ahead to a kidnapping by covert ops in Munich, Germany. We finally meet Jackson Brodie in the present. I found this unnecessarily confusing, but by then I was hooked and read on.

Started Early, Took My Dog takes place in Leeds, West Yorkshire. The title drew me to this book. Atkinson's complex plot kept me reading. All the pieces come together like a jigsaw puzzle by the ending.

Now that I realize this is the fourth of a series about Jackson Brodie, I'm looking forward to going back and reading the earlier books.

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