Oh, that review excerpt was by Stephen King. And contrary to the title and cover art, it’s a mystery I found that interesting. That’s high praise, I thought in a Nicholas Cage voice. “ Not just the best novel I read this year, but the best mystery of the decade.”

Needless to say, I don’t recommend this one.Then there was this review excerpt below the title: I stuck it out through chapters and chapters of depressing character development only because I wanted to see how it ended, and the ending was a big disappointment. They were mostly just three separate cases. Really, all Jackson Brodie did was interview a few people that the police hadn’t interviewed during their original investigations and voila! – three cold cases solved! And the clever convergence of the three cases that I was looking forward to? Yeah, that didn’t happen. It really became strange after a while.Īnd speaking of the plot, the mystery was moved forward halfheartedly with some obligatory, but very light, detective work.

Sex, in particular, was brought up often and in very crass ways that did nothing to advance the plot and only made the characters even more unlikable. The back stories for the three crimes is told in a compelling way, so the novel starts out well as we learn about a toddler who disappeared, a young wife and mother who killed her husband with an ax, and a teenager killed in an apparently random act of violence.īut despite a good start, the book steadily declines as the author focuses on developing her miserable lot of characters, most of which have weird hang ups about sex, weak moral characters, unfulfilling lives and a disdain for religion.

This sets up an expectation with the reader that the three cases will all converge in the end in a satisfying and surprising way. The premise of Case Histories is very promising – private investigator Jackson Brodie is commissioned to solve three different cold cases by three different clients. Unfortunately, my craving for a good mystery was not satisfied. I chose this novel because I was in the mood for a good mystery, plus I recently read Life After Life, also by Kate Atkinson, and liked the author’s writing style. Case Histories is the first book in Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie series.

Kate atkinson case histories review