The subplot of the attempts to kill Jackson himself was also a little forced perhaps. Caroline’s story in particular didn’t strike me as terribly credible, knowing how stringent the checks can in an the educational world. Michelle’s daughter had been taken on by her grandparents and has run away and lost contact. Michelle’s sister asks for Jackson’s help finding her niece.Īnd, perhaps most significantly, there is a missing black cat! Finally from 1979, we are presented with the apparently open-and-shut case of Michelle who, suffering from post-natal depression, seems to have buried an axe into her husband’s skull. From 1994, we have the unsolved murder of Laura Wyre, the daughter of a solicitor who had been attacked with a knife whilst in her father’s office, a loss from which Theo, her father, can not recover. The soft toy that had been with Olivia when she had died. We have the unsolved disappearance of Olivia Land from 1970, prompted by her two remaining sisters – Julia and Amelia – finding Olivia’s cherished toy in their father’s office drawer after his death. It is so easy to get lost in the flow of her prose.Ĭase Histories revolves around a number of cold cases as the TV shows suggest we should be calling them. Whilst there is a strong narrative drive through the chapters, each chapter meanders and jumps between past and present, between action and meditation, in a stream-of-consciousness which feels fully realistic and credible. And they work to complement each other.Īnd Atkinson’s ability to delve into the characters’ minds is wonderful. The difference is that his narrative voice works and it fits him beautifully.Īlso like Robert Galbraith, Atkinson bounces us around different narrative points of view but she controls and manages those changes. Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie had suffered a trauma in his childhood as had Cormoran Strike. Like Robert Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike, Atkinson’s detective is powerful and imposing and very masculine he has also lost his wife just as Strike has been dumped by his girlfriend. Kate Atkinson – whose more explicitly literary offering of Life After Life was divine and possibly one of the best books I have ever read – is equally as controlled here, albeit set within the detective genre. Another detective fiction novel – and another still to review, albeit with a paranormal twist – and this shares many similarities with The Cuckoo’s Calling but is done so much better.

Case histories book review