CASE HISTORIES by Kate Atkinson

Atkinson has probably been my favorite author this winter. I name her, even though I loved David Wroblewski's Story of Edgar Sawtelle, because this is the third of her books that I've read, and I still have her very first one to read.

Case Histories is the first of three novels involving the retired police inspector, and now investigator Jackson Brodie, and what a piece of work he is!  He's very attractive to women- in this one we meet Binky Rains, the old woman who left him 2 million pounds ( and Jackson was wondering why her only nephew, Quintus, was trying to kill him..) His ex-wife hates him, he is about to get involved with Julia in this book- we meet her again in one of the later stories. He's having trouble with his teeth in this book, requiring several emergency visits to his dentist, his house is burned down at one point, he's beaten up and put in hospital, yet he befriends a poor homeless woman, Lily-Rose.

Atkinson is a master at creating separate stories, then slowly intertwining them, with Jackson, often unwittingly, as the axis upon which they all eventually coincide. For example, Binky Rains' home backs onto the home where Olivia disappeared. Also, Shirley Morrison, the sister of Michelle, is a nurse at the hospital where Jackson is taken when he's beaten up.

There are three cases:  Olivia, the beloved younger sister of three older girls, who is taken from a tent at night and never found; Laura Wyre, who is struck down by a knife-wielding stranger in her father's office, and Michelle, who struck her husband down with an axe.All three of these took place some 30 years earlier, but all of them contact Jackson to try and find some sense of closure: except for the third case: he ends up in bed with the murderer's sister, then finds out she's married.

The best thing about Atkinson's books is her sense of humor- there's a wryness there which is completely engaging: not the charm of Alexander McCall Smith, but a detached , bemused tolerance of all her characters, unlovely and unloveable as many of them may be. She sees, and writes convincingly about, the humor and the sadness in each of these situations. Theo, the overly obese father of Laura, who was absolutely besotted with his daughter; Amelia, whose dress and appearance show her complete lack of fashion sense, Binky Rains, with her "high society" accents : "bleck" for black- you can almost hear her saying it.

I wonder if these novels would ever be made into TV shows or movies by the BBC.  They'd be wonderful!