NextRead

Title: Case Histories
Author: Kate Atkinson
Publisher: Black Swan 2005
Price: 7.99

Case Histories is one of those novels that you want to start again as soon as you’ve finished it so you can go back and find out all the bits you’ve missed. Kate Atkinson has interlaced all the lives of the characters so tightly that you don’t see all the connections until she turns over the tapestry and shows you the knots.

From the first three opening chapters, which present the details of three open cases that land at Mr Brodie’s door, Atkinson’s relaxed, warm and straight talking style drags you into the lives of the characters and keeps you needing to know what happened so that you can say ‘case closed’ at the end.

For an ex-army, ex-police and current private detective Jackson Brodie is quite a lovable character, maybe a little soft, but definitely in the British Bumbling Detective mould.

The story flips from one character’s view point to the next all being held together with a connection to Jackson though that is rarely the only connection. As it flips, it sometimes rewinds events so you can see that part of the story from the other side. Atkinson is an excellent storyteller and keeps all the elements moving along even when she seems to be going back to tell the reader something they think they already know.

For all its emotion there is lots of humour that comes from Atkinson’s narration and Brodie’s whit. Though there is one thread that border on the ridiculous and I’d like to have seen it treated more seriously. But that might be because Atkinson is such a good writer that I’d love to read her going darker.

Both moving and tightly packed this is a wonderful novel to read when all the gritty crime novels get too much. I’m itching to get on with the next one to see what web Jackson ends up entangled in next.