Started Early, Took my Dog

Started Early, Took my Dog is a mystery novel by Kate Atkinson. It’s the fourth book in the Jackson Brodie series, and the plot centers around a retired detective who takes custody of an offender’s child but discovers that no good deed ever goes unpunished. It was published in 2010 by Doubleday and received positive critical reviews, although it’s less popular than earlier books in the series. Atkinson is an award-winning, international bestselling author who writes both mystery and crime novels. Her debut, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award.

The protagonist is Tracy Waterhouse. She’s a security chief at the Merrion Centre in Leeds, England. She used to be a detective, but she got bored with retirement, so she got a job to keep her occupied. Even though she has a four-year-old son, she’s not interested in being a stay-at-home mom. Still, she feels like something is missing from her life.

One day on the job, she encounters a drug addict called Kelly. Kelly’s familiar to the local police force and she’s always causing disturbances around town. On this day, Kelly’s shouting and swearing at someone on her cell phone, and she doesn’t care that people stop to look at her. It’s a shopping center, so her behavior is even more obvious. Tracy won’t stand for this aggression and approaches her.



At Kelly’s side is her very young daughter, Courtney. Courtney doesn’t seem bothered by what’s happening, but Kelly’s very rough with her and pulls her along so fast that her feet drag over the ground. In a split second, Tracy decides there’s only one solution. She offers Kelly money in exchange for Courtney—and for Kelly to get out of the shopping center.

Meanwhile, Jackson Brodie, a private eye, rescues a dog which is badly mistreated outside the shopping center. He’s looking for a purpose in life after his wife, a scam artist, left him and stole all his money. Homeless and picking up transient investigative work, he’s driving around England on his latest job—finding his client’s birth parents. She lives in New Zealand. He knows the family lives in Leeds, so he goes looking for them there, which is how he ends up at the shopping center that day.

Unaware of what’s going on outside, Tracy takes Courtney from Kelly. She then panics because she knows what people in law enforcement will think of her if they ever find out she bought a person. Tracy isn’t thinking clearly and decides she must change her name and Courtney’s name, and go on the run from everyone.



She thinks because she paid money in exchange for Courtney that she’s a child trafficker and part of the criminal underworld. For someone like Tracy, with her police background and understanding of the law, it makes sense that she feels this way, even if she had the best intentions at the time. She now unexpectedly has a new child in her life, and it’s up to her to protect Courtney from the kind of horrors she witnessed as a detective.

Meanwhile, an elderly actress called Matilda, or “Tilly,” sees what happens between Tracy and Kelly. She has early dementia and she’s confused by what she sees. This confusion prompts her to start investigations of her own, which come to a head as the book progresses. Tracy doesn’t see her in the shopping center, but she watches Tilly’s TV show faithfully. Jackson, however, is not so keen on it, because it’s all about the police force and it’s inaccurate. In a comical turn of events, it’s Tilly who saves Tracy and Courtney at the end of the book—ironically, Tilly finally gets to star in a “real” crime drama.

What links all the characters together is a death Tracy investigated in 1975. A young prostitute died, leaving her toddler son trapped in the flat with her for weeks. Tracy wanted to foster the boy, but the police promptly took him away and placed him with a Catholic orphanage. Tracy to this day isn’t convinced by what happened—she thinks her colleagues covered something up. It turns out that her instincts are right.



A policeman used the prostitute and the son is his. When the prostitute tries to tell his wife about their liaison, the policeman kills her and leaves the boy in the flat. Higher-ranking policemen discover this and cover it up. They place another child from the flat, a young girl, with a family who move to New Zealand—the girl is now Jackson’s client.

All these threads come together when Tracy questions how her colleagues knew the layout of the flat so well before they entered it, and why they were all in a hurry to close the case. When Tracy realizes the truth and they try to kill her so that she won’t tell anyone, Tilly saves the day and kills the policeman. Tracy escapes and can live her new life.