Kate Atkinson is one of the most respected and popular authors in contemporary Britain. Her debut novel won the prestigious Whitbread Prize, beating many well-known candidates—for example Salman Rushdie with his “The Moor’s Last Sigh.” Yet her real fame came with the publication of “Case Histories” — the first book in the series about Cambridge private detective Jackson Brodie. The novel sparked a wave of delight among both critics and fellow professionals—and among the general readership. Soon, one of Atkinson’s most fervent champions became none other than Stephen King himself.
So in “Case Histories,” Jackson Brodie will have to take on cases that the police have long since filed away in their archives: the mysterious nighttime disappearance of a little girl from her parents’ garden; the unmotivated murder of the daughter of a prominent lawyer who helped him in his office; and a bloody incident of domestic violence in a young family living on a farm. At first glance, there seems to be nothing in common between them, and the traces have gone cold for a long time—yet the threads, intertwined, lead into the present in the most unexpected way and bring the characters together—each with their own skeletons in the cupboard…