Kate Atkinson – Case Histories

Review by show host

This was unusual in the way it starts with 3 case histories/ 3 crimes – an abduction and 2 murders - involving 3 completely different families. They seem totally unrelated. Years later members of each family decide to hire Jackson Brodie, an ex cop turned private investigator, to try to succeed where the police failed – to find the perpetrator of the crime. The whole story is based in and around Cambridge, UK.

No 1 case history, 1970: was about a dysfunctional family, 4 sisters, witless mother and an abusive father. The youngest sister, 3year old Olivia, went missing when sleeping in the tent with her older sister Julia. Olivia, and her cuddly, hand knitted, stuffed blue mouse, were never seen again. The police had searched, questions asked but so sign was ever found.

No 2 case history, 1994: Theo doted on his youngest daughter Laura, he had another older daughter – Jennifer – but he didn’t love her as much as Laura. Theo’s wife had died when Laura was only two. Theo had raised them on his own. He worried everytime that Laura went out of the door until she came home safe at night, (get knocked over by some maniac, or attacked on her way home), so he was relieved when Laura agreed to work in the office of the solicitors in which he was a working partner. Her first day, Theo wasn’t going to be in the office until the afternoon. By then Laura was dead. Stabbed by a knife wielding maniac, wearing a yellow golf sweater. The man was never found./identified.

No 3 case history 1979: Michelle didn’t have enough time in her day and was setting her alarm earlier and earlier to give her time before her baby woke. Michelle was 18, married to Keith, lived in the middle of nowhere, and hadn’t bonded with her baby daughter Tanya. When Keith came in one day making a noise, which woke ‘it’ - the baby – it was the last straw for Michelle. She went outside to get the woodcutting axe. When the police arrived, Michelle was sitting holding the bloodied axe, with her dead husband on the floor with a split skull.

The story then goes back to each case scenario and tells us more about the events from each of their views as well as bringing us back to the present and their lives now.
Case 1, the disappearance: The father dies and as two of the three remaining wacky sisters go through their fathers belongings they find The blue mouse. This makes them decide to try again and try to find out what happened to their little sister. The two wacky, spinster sisters Julia & Amelia,fancy the pants off Jackson Brodie and compete for his affections. …’Julia was on her knees letting the dog lick her face. Amelia wished she wouldn’t do that, you didn’t know where that dog’s tongue had been – well, you did and that’s why you didn’t want it washing your face!’…

Case 2, Theo has to keep trying to find the killer of his daughter, he can’t rest until he does. He and Jackson become friends. Jackson was a police officer working on this case but then he didn’t have a daughter of his own like he does now, couldn’t imagine the pain.

Case 3, Michelles sister, Shirley, is hiring Jackson, not to find her Michelle, who is now out of jail and in hiding somewhere, but Michelles daughter whom Shirley promised she would care for whilst Michelle was in prison. Jackson doesn’t feel that Shirley is telling him the whole truth.

We also dip into Jacksons life, his marriage split, which he is still sore about and his little girl Marlee, who he has weekly access to, who is 8 going on 16. …'..his one girl in pink jeans and a t shirt that said ‘ so many boys, so little time’, did the people who designed these t-shirts, who made these t-shirts in a size 8-10yrs ever stop to think that what they were doing might actually be immoral? (Of course, the people who made the t-shirts were probably themselves 8-10 yrs in a sweatshop in the Phillipines somewhere1’….

We also meet Binky, an eccentric old lady who has hired Jackson because someone keeps taking her cats. Binky has no friends, no children and her husband is dead. Binky has this thing about ‘black cats’. The first cat to go missing was a ‘bleck ket’ called Nigger – Binky Rain could see nothing wrong with the cats name – after all it was not named after a Bleck men’ but after Captain Scotts cat on the Discovery (dear god,thought Jackson, did she really go around the streets of Newnham shouting Nigger!) Strangely Binkys house is on the opposite side of the lane to the wacky sisters family home.

Suddenly halfway through the story someone called christine crops up, she is married and living under a pseudonym. Then Jackson finds himself a victim as his house is blown up, and the brakes on his car slashed.

It is a very clever book with noir humour. You have to keep up with the plots as there are so many characters being introduced that you tend to forget who they are, expecially when we had Caroline turn up out of the blue. Also I found sometimes that the dialogue between the sisters, went on a little bit too much at times, that my mind would start to wander.

There are some twists & turns in this book, the cases are, in fact, all "solved" by Jackson, but we are left with "loose ends" regarding the perpetrators of these murders and what happens to them.
It is a crime novel but not in the general term, its not hard, fast page turning stuff its more to do with quirky people, the bloodshed and sexuality are blended into the story like the two eccentric spinsters talking about sexual fantasy, almost miss marplish.