I've only recently discovered Kate Atkinson and, once you get over the seemingly disconnected stories and time frames at the start, it becomes a terrific read. There is humour, and intrigue, and good old-fashioned storytelling. There is also frankness regarding the crimes and relationships which could be confronting for the more reserved reader (of whom I am one but I managed okay without feeling it was "too much"). I highly recommend this book (and this author).

Case Histories is the first book in the Jackson Brodie series by popular British author, Kate Atkinson. The background facts on several unrelated cases are presented: the disappearance of a toddler thirty-four years previous; the slaying by knife in broad daylight of a solicitors daughter ten years ago; the disappearance of a daughter whose mother went to jail for the murder of her father twenty-five years before; an old woman who is convinced her black cats are being abducted. PI Jackson Brodie, ex-Military Police, ex-cop, is the link between all these disparate cases. But as Jackson investigates, the lines dividing the cases begin to blur and people left behind enter each others stories. And it seems Jackson has an unsolved case in his own past as well. Atkinsons format may deter some readers, as the three cases in the first chapters seem both unrelated and unfinished, but persistence is rewarded with an excellent mystery/drama that will leave the reader eager for more. Atkinson has a wonderful way with words and some of her passages are superbly evocative: Right up until the end Victors mind had been as methodical as an efficient library, whereas Amelia felt hers was more like the cupboard under the stair where ancient hockey sticks were shoved beside broken hoovers and boxes of old Christmas decorations, and the one thing you knew was in there a 5-amp fuse, a tin of tan shoe polish, a Philips screwdriver would almost certainly be the one thing you couldnt lay your hands on. and vividly descriptive: Her mad hair looked as if it had been groomed by a troupe of circus dogs. Jackson is a very likeable character, flawed, but trying to do the right thing. Other characters are recognisable as people we encounter in our everyday lives: eccentric old women, homeless waifs, fat geezers, precocious young girls. There may be no classic denouement, but this is nonetheless a clever and funny detective story.