Book Report: Case Histories

4. Kate Atkinson, Case Histories (2004) (4/3/25)

This book is the first of six featuring private investigator Jackson Brodie. I had read Kate Atkinson before (Transcription and Life after Life) and enjoyed her lively style. This time, I confess, about halfway through I was growing rather weary of the liveliness. Maybe I just wanted a straightforward mystery, which this, featuring three separate cases spread over several decades, is not—though we do learn, in each case, what happened (it's not entirely clear whether Brodie himself did, though I presume so), and in several instances otherwise unrelated characters come to overlap in the present, often subtly. Atkinson is nothing if not inventive.

I did enjoy Brodie and the father of a murdered girl, Theo, but the main female characters got a bit tedious, almost caricature-ish (as if written by a man). The chapters jump from one character, one case, to another, Brodie being the only thing holding them together. If I hadn't found him so sympathetic, I probably would have abandoned the book. As it is, I'm glad I finished—though I may choose not to read any more of Atkinson. I noted in my earlier reviews that she is perhaps too clever. Maybe I just prefer simple intelligence to cleverness? Or... maybe I'll get a hankering to find out what Mr. Brodie is up to, now that—thanks to a subplot of this book—he's wealthy, and we trust still wise, and can be more a man of leisure, a man more in charge of his own fate? Time will tell.