Case Histories by Kate Atkinson.

               Case Histories by Kate Atkinson. Book Review.

"Novels gave you a completely false idea about life, they told lies and they implied there were endings when in reality there were no endings, everything just went on and on and on."

These apparently disparate case histories cover 1970, 1994 and 1979 involving girls who had either been murdered or had simply vanished into thin air. Private Investigator, Jackson Brodie, beautifully drawn but flawed through and through had spent 12 years in the Cambridgeshire Constabulary and before that the military police. Forty-five years of age and working on irksome or dull cases like Binky Rain and her missing cats when he becomes inundated with requests to solve three case histories of people who have been seriously damaged by crimes committed against their loved ones.

"He was used to being a voyeur, the outsider looking in, and nothing, but nothing that anyone did surprised him anymore."

There is a fourth case history: 1971 Holy Girls which is personal to Jackson and involves the unsolved murder of his big sister Niamh who was 16 at the time. It was believed she was abducted, raped, strangled and then dumped in the canal. Her death weighed heavily with brother Francis who was 18 at the time and he never got over her brutal killing. He killed himself and it was 12 year old Jackson who found him hanging. Two tragedies in a short space of time. The case histories contain dark subject matter of death, despair, abuse and thwarted love but end with a sense of hope and happiness you'll be pleased to note.

In two cases there is closure, a sense of relief. Considering the time scale that is more than the clients probably expected. Jackson is an exceptional investigator and risks life and limb to find out answers in order to solve the crimes.

In Family Plot Rosemary, married at 18 to a man twice her age, is expecting her fifth child and hasn't time or energy for her four daughters who seem to run wild. Sylvia, the strangest of the girls is 13, has developed an unhealthy obsession with religion, then there is Amelia, Julia and 3 year old Olivia, the beautiful child who everyone adores. The marriage is loveless, Victor is a mathematician and he locks himself away in his study and detests his daughters. Rosemary detests him and has little maternal affection for her three eldest daughters with the exception of Olivia, her child spun from light.

"Sometimes she wanted to eat Olivia, to bite into a tender forearm or a soft calf muscle, even to devour her whole like a snake and take her back inside her where she would be safe."

The tragedy happened one hot summer. Rosemary had refused to let her daughters  sleep outside in the tent, then felt guilty about her "most forgotten child" Amelia and she told her she could sleep outside with Olivia. Rascal the family dog and Blue Mouse her pet toy accompanied them. The following day Amelia woke up and Olivia and Blue Mouse had gone. That was in 1970. Following the death of Victor at the age of 84 Julia finds Blue Mouse and suspects foul play. Amelia, too, is desperate to resolve the case, still hopeful that Olivia had perhaps been abducted and is still alive. The investigation unearths vile details of their appalling childhood and their sexual abuse which partly explains why Amelia is unstable and suicidal with her "meaningless little life."

Case Histories 2. Just a Normal Day. But it wasn't normal. Theo is a solicitor regarded as being "morbidly obese." His wife Valerie died when she was 34 and he was left to bring up his two daughters on his own. Laura his youngest daughter is still at home but almost on the point of going to Aberdeen university. She adores her father and the feeling is reciprocated. "Theo loved {her} with a strength that was like a cataclysm, a disaster." During the summer, Laura worked in a bar until Theo suggested she could do some temping for his law firm. On her first day, a knife-wielding maniac attacked one of the partners, David Holroyd and carved through Laura's carotid artery. She was "felled in her tracks, like an animal, like a deer." Theo had been in court that morning but returned to the office to witness the carnage and his daughter, Laura bleeding to death. He never recovered.

Ten years later, a broken Theo, now retired turns up in Jackson's office wanting closure. From his own bereavement and counselling Jackson knows there were stages you went through: "shock, denial, guilt, anger, depression-and then acceptance." Theo, he believed, was stuck somewhere near the beginning-even after 10 years.

"What did you do when the worst thing that could happen to you had already happened-how did you live your life then?"

Everything from Duty Nothing from Love is the third one. Like Rosemary, Michelle is another teenage mother, saddled with a husband and child at 18 years of age. "She hadn't bonded with the baby, instead she was shackled by it." I suppose in her own way she loved them both although she had sacrificed her education and a promising future. She became so meticulous about organising her pathetic and unhappy life that she was regarded by her sister Shirley as a control freak. Once she lost control she became neurotic and aggressive. A violent row with Keith one day and a screaming baby and she lost it. she grabbed the axe and attacked her husband, killing him. She asked her sister to look after the "bug" knowing that she would be put away for life.

Jackson gets involved in this case when Shirley asks him to find Tanya. At this point we learn that Michelle has been released and adopted a new identity. Jackson breaks the ethical code by sleeping with Shirley but the more he gets to know her the more his instincts tell him that something is not quite right. He has a bad feeling about her. "Was she a good liar or was she just good at avoiding the truth?" Eventually the truth rears its ugly head and we discover how Keith died and more importantly who killed him. We are told that "anyone's capable of killing, given the right circumstances." Binky Rain's demonic nephew, Quintus Rain seems determined to murder Jackson, then there's Caroline who is desperate to turn the clock back and start again: "one lost lamb." Lily-Rose is the homeless girl with yellow hair and a dog who keeps cropping up all over the place searching for something. And there's creepy Stuart Lappin and perverted Stan Jessop. Plenty to keep you interested. I'll leave you with one of Jackson's gems: " The only time you were safe was when you were dead." A superb crime thriller.

Publisher: Black Swan.  ISBN: 978-0-552772433 and Doubleday: 978-0-385-60799-5.

REVIEW it by Carol Naylor.

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