But he doesn’t do it alone and there’s a lot else going on here, all of it rendered with Atkinson’s vastly enjoyable nonchalance. When Brodie has to take care of Dido, the dog of Brodie’s ex-partner Julia, with whom he shares a son (it’s complicated) and Dido growls at some rowdy teenage boys, Brodie asks her: “Really? You and what wolf?” Reggie and her female teammate are so tough that they earn the nickname “the Kray Twins,” after two of Britain’s most notorious killers.

Image Kate Atkinson Credit... Helen Clyne

As Atkinson recently told The Guardian, “Big Sky” began as a screenplay with a female lead. Atkinson has said that she loves Netflix, attributes the same feeling to Brodie, and has had a previous Brodie book, “Case Histories,” adapted for PBS. It all shows. This book has a lot of drastic scene changes, is packed with minor characters and is in no hurry to get where it’s going.

[ This book was one of our most anticipated titles of June. See the full list. ]

But somehow Atkinson never seems to be treading water. As she introduces a crew of old buddies who gravitate toward the posh Belvedere Golf Club, she opens up a whole world of awful marriages, alarming betrayals and, in the case of the richest member of the group, a first wife who accidentally fell off a cliff before a second, trophy wife could be acquired. The other women in this circle tend to get very quiet when thinking about this.

Then there’s the early scene that establishes the plot: a scammy “businessman” who cons foreign women into coming to Yorkshire, where the book is set. We don’t know who he is or what he has to do with the rest of the story, but we know that human trafficking lies somewhere beneath the polite socializing with which Atkinson pairs it. It’s just a matter of time before she catalyzes Brodie, Reggie and the others to start tearing the scab off this thing.

There is no stray anything in “Big Sky.” That’s one big reason Atkinson’s devotees love her. No detail is too small to come home to roost; as with Tana French, with whom she is justly compared for writing mayhem-centric books that should not be regarded as genre fiction, it’s worth rereading the beginning once you’ve finished this novel just to see how well the author has manipulated you. Atkinson is also adept at weaving the mundane details of her characters’ lives (or perhaps her own) into the Brodie books as a way of humanizing them, despite the stark malevolence that lurks beneath this workaday surface.