Kate Atkinson writes the kind of novels you gulp down greedily and quickly.  That’s especially true of her Jackson Brodie series, in which Big Sky is the fifth and most recent installment.  It’s a novel that zips along quickly, thanks to Atkinson’s wry, easy, slightly conversational style. And it’s precisely that style that’s the problem here.  Big Sky is about corruption in high places and more specifically about human trafficking and child abuse. Few subjects are as serious as that, yet Atkinson’s tone throughout is unwaveringly light and jocular.  It seemed hugely inappropriate and it spoiled completely my enjoyment of a novel by a writer I usually admire very much. I can only assume her intention was to make the horror of abuse even more horrific by setting it in a quiet seaside town and populating it with slightly clownish characters.  If so, her plan didn’t work.  The effect (on me in any case) was to trivialize an enterprise that destroys everything it touches and that’s inexcusable.