Apparently I read Case Histories some time ago (and watched the TV series), because I rated it on Goodreads, but I didn't remember a thing about it. Which is fine, because it's a twisty, turny set of mysteries that is more fun to read if you don't know the outcome. This is the first in Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie series. Brodie is a jaded former ex-cop/current private investigator whose personal life is in shambles. While he's trying to cope with his wife leaving him for another man, not to mention things in his past that haunt him, Brodie has a number of people reach out to him for help, people who don't appear to be in any way connected: Two women trying to find out what happened to their beloved younger sister, who disappeared as a young child; a grieving father whose daughter was murdered in her workplace, but the murderer was never found; a cranky elderly woman who believes people are stealing the cats she so diligently hoards; and a woman who wants him to find her sister, a woman who murdered her husband and disappeared.
Of course, as in any good mystery, there's much more going on than meets the eye, and back stories and memories are faulty to a large degree. In a couple of the cases, I figured out what was going on, but in the others, the endings caught me quite by surprise, but in a believable way. Atkinson is a fantastic writer--her Life After Life and A God in Ruins are among my favorite books ever. This is one of her earlier books, and the heavy plotting doesn't quite hold up by the end; there are tidy bows being tied up in the last few chapters. But the characters were so well drawn and so interesting, with all their individual flaws, that I didn't care.
So, on to the next Jackson Brodie book: One Good Turn. I don't think I've read any of the other Brodie books, so I suspect I have some fun times ahead.
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