When Will There Be Good News? / Kate Atkinson 388 p.

I started reading Atkinson's Jackson Brodie (ex private detective) novels with Started Early, Took My Dog, so technically I'm going backward.  It hardly matters, though, since these stories are so well constructed that they work as stand-alones.  A successful physician has a terrible secret in her past.  Her teenage nanny, who has some whoppers in her own background, can't make sense of her boss's disappearance and her investigations set off an intricate chain of events.  The body count here is extremely high, to the point (almost) of ludicrousness, but Atkinson's tart dialogue and superb characters, especially that of  Reggie the babysitter, are so darned good that an extra murder here and there doesn't hurt.