After reading BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE MUSEUM many years ago I was surprised to hear that Kate Atkinson had written a crime novel CASE HISTORIES. I’d thought of Atkinson as a literary writer and although I love Crime Fiction I didn’t think of it as literary.
CASE HISTORIES changed all that. Here was a brilliant, moving, pacey, clever crime novel. It was full of startling stories seemingly unrelated. The detective didn’t turn up for four or five long chapters and even then it wasn’t clear how he related to what had been described so far.
What a read! A book that described the powerful love of families and the terrible heartache of loss. Plus several wonderful whodunits and a great laid back detective. Jackson Brodie had the usual difficult past and his own heartaches but he also had the luck of the devil and crimes seemed to solve themselves around him.
When I heard there was a second book A JOLLY MURDER MYSTERY I thought no, bad idea, to follow up a brilliant book. It can never be as good. But it was, in an entirely different way. The same can be said of a further two books WHEN WILL THERE BE GOOD NEWS and STARTED EARLY TOOK MY DOG.
Thank you Kate Atkinson for making crime fiction matter so much.
