Kate Atkinson on writing: A good day is when you’ve written a good sentence

Unlike most serial detectives, Jackson Brodie doesn’t always save the day. He doesn’t always get the girl. And in “Big Sky,” Kate Atkinson’s fifth book to feature Jackson, he isn’t even the main character. 

“He’s just, in many ways, the thread that pulls the story through,” admits the author, who lives in Edinburgh, Scotland. “He might have been sidelined a bit much in this book. I may need to bring him back a bit, give him a more central role.”

In Ms. Atkinson’s often-humorous mysteries – as well as her novels set during World War II (“Life After Life,” “A God in Ruins,”