BOOK - Kate Atkinson's "Case Histories"

What’s most surprising about “Case Histories,” a spry and whimsical mystery novel, is that it’s surprising at all. The mystery novel is one of the most conventional and stable genres, where things plod ominously forward. The threads are sometimes too elaborate to notice, but we know how the whole thing is going to end: a chase, or perhaps a shoot-out, and, of course, the “whodunit” revelation. Kate Atkinson not only defies these expectations, she surpasses them, all while playfully making fun of those classic and oh-so-outdated staples. She’s not as satirical as Jasper Fforde, but she’s also not as obvious, and this affords “Case Histories” some depth. After all, a book about missing and/or dead children can’t be all fun and games.

Of course, dead children are a blithe cover for “Case Histories”: the real mystery is, and always has been, life itself. That’s a puzzle with no clues, like Atkinson’s narrative. Rather than doling out evidence, she relates character tics and neuroses; she lets them live, and she lets them ramble, and she lets the smaller mysteries work themselves out to a natural, almost graceful, finale.

The story begins with three innocuous case histories (the crimes), which occur in 1970, 1994, and 1979. The narrative then jumps forward to today, as Jackson Brodie, a private investigator, takes on two cold cases. The Land sisters want him to find their abducted sister (1970) and Theo Wyre wants the name of the man who killed his daughter (1994). These characters alternate as narrators (Amelia speaking for both sisters), along with Caroline, easily recognizable as the so-called axe-murderer from 1979. These characters often run into the same people or offer different perspectives on identical events, and Atkinson wisely uses parenthetical asides to color her third-person narrative. It’s clever, but it eventually grows tiring and, due to the similarities in voice, is outdone by its own cleverness. So too, the strained connection of Caroline’s story to the rest of the book: she’s connected to Brodie by tangent only, and her case history never really meshes with the others—mainly because hers is obvious, plot-twist or no.

But the case histories aren’t the focus of Atkinson’s novel: they serve more as a launching point for sarcastic social commentary (the narrators have every class covered). It’s also ironic, given Atkinson’s educated voice, how easily she delves into the most deviant discourses. “Amelia had followed Julia inside under the misapprehension that [the store] sold bath products and was stunned when Julia picked up an object that looked like a pink horse’s tail and declared admiringly, ‘Oh, look, a butt plug—how cute!’”

These dissonances, between the expected and the un-, keep surprising the reader, and these nuanced jokes are a modern response to the classicists’ jolly abundance of description. These details also endow “Case Histories” with a sad little gaiety that stresses the underlying sadness¬: dead people can’t laugh. We, however, not only can, we should. So go: it should be no mystery where to start. (Hint: it starts with a “C” and ends in “ase Histories.”)