After a five-year absence, Jackson Brodie returns in "Death at the Sign of the Rook." Readers of the mega-selling mystery series will be thrilled, but is Kate Atkinson?

The writer, who has expressed ambivalence about returning to the character and who also had huge success with non-Brodie books including "Life After Life" and "Shrines of Gaiety," whipped out four Brodie mysteries in quick succession in the oughts. But there was a nine-year wait for the last one, "Big Sky," and now another big gap before "Rook," which brings back crabby Brodie (also the protagonist of hit TV series "Case Histories") in what amounts to a supporting role.

Agatha Christie fans will recognize the territory of "Rook" and, in fact, some of Atkinson's characters share names with Christie's. The setting is a crumbling Yorkshire mansion that is hosting murder mystery weekends in order to keep the roof from caving in on owner Lady Milton and her family — all of whom, in true Christie fashion, would love to murder each other. As in Christie's "The Mousetrap," the characters get stuck in the mansion on a snowy evening/corpses pile up/a detective (Brodie, investigating art thefts) happens to be around.

Atkinson has said she grew up reading Christie and admires the legend's plotting, but that her own writing is more interested in character than plot. That may be why it takes so long for the mystery to materialize in "Rook," which skewers Christie with the character of Nancy Styles, a fictional writer who is clearly a Christie stand-in and whose work is much-discussed (and much-trashed) by the people in "Rook."

So don't pick up "Rook" expecting a clever puzzle. Atkinson is capable of creating them, as she has in several Brodie books, but she leans away from that in favor of a zesty cast of characters, starting with Lady Milton. Mystery readers will recognize the archetype — a scatter-brained noblewoman incapable of serving herself a glass of water without a footman to turn on the tap — but her helplessness is hilarious in "Rook."

Death at the Sign of the Rook
Death at the Sign of the Rook

It also may be her superpower. Atkinson keeps revealing more nuances in what could be a stock character, like when Lady Milton's irritated, heartless reaction to the inconvenience of finding a servant's corpse in the kitchen also turns out to be an excellent solution: "The undertaker would never get through. Not in this weather. The last time we were snowed in, we were stuck here for two weeks. We had better find somewhere cold to store her."

So, "Death at the Sign of the Rook" is a bit of a trade-off: Not as much Jackson Brodie as fans might like but, in return, we get what may be Atkinson's funniest book yet.

Death at the Sign of the Rook

By: Kate Atkinson.

Publisher: Doubleday, 304 pages, $30.