I loved this book! I've read Started Early Took My Dog and One Good Turn and loved them. Case Histories didn't disappoint. I really like Jackson and I like the humour in the book. Even though the cases are serious Kate Atkinson writes humour into the story.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would recommend it to others.

I love Kate Atkinson novels and was excited when I was given chance by Netgalley to read and review Case Histories. However, I realised I had already read it. Never mind I read it again to reacquaint myself with Jackson Brodie. This was probably my least favourite mainly because I felt it was like some short stories stuck together and couldn’t immediately see the link. I must say though I have really enjoyed every other book Kate has written and look forward to the next one.

My thanks to Random House Transworld/Black Swan for a digital edition of Kate Atkinson’s ‘Case Histories’, the first in her widely acclaimed Jackson Brodie series.

First published in 2005 it and others in this series have been rereleased with new animal-themed covers ahead of the highly anticipated release of Book 5: ‘Big Sky’ on 18 June.

Very simply the novel opens with three case histories and then the narrative moves to the present day as private investigator Jackson Brodie is drawn into trying to solve them.

I first read this novel in 2016 and loved it. It is very character driven drawing on the well established trope of the down-at-the-heels private eye undertaking quirky cases.

Although quite slow paced I was enthralled and found great pleasure in the revisiting Brodie ahead of the release of his next adventure.

A fantastic introduction to a set of hugely memorable characters. Kate Atkinson writes with such humour whilst also getting to the serious heart of the mysteries involved in the novel.
Jackson Brodie is a former military police officer turned private investigator who has his own connections to the cases' tangled web of facts. There are 3 main families involved, each with their own personal tragedies that plague the lives of those left to pick up the pieces. Our protagonist makes it 4 families with the story we find out about him and mix that with his failure to stick to the rules makes him even more of the lovable rogue that develops over the course of the Brodie series.

A private investigator looks into some murders that took place long ago and deals with the mess of his own personal life.

Do you know how all of guys that Ryan Murphy casts in American Horror Story all look the same? And, there’s just so many of them that everyone is like, ‘okay, i know that one is evan peters because he’s blonde but i have absolutely no bloody clue about the rest of you’?? That is legitimately what it feels like to read this book.
Normally, a mystery/thriller has one murder to solve. Maybe two, if the case are linked. Kate Atkinson’s Case Histories had three. And, that number only includes the big ones - to be more accurate, the plot kept splitting, again and again, into barely-tangential cases and subplots; so much so that, by barely even halfway, my mind was being crushed under the weight of all of the information I was being fed, the people I was being introduced to, the voices I was being forced to listen to.
There were just so many characters - so many two-dimension characters that were built on the same tired stereotypes and tropes - that by the end of each and every page, I had to go back and remind myself who everyone was again.
Every page.
For 428 pages.
It was tedious, frustrating and overall, just so bloody boring. And, if this is what to be expected from Kate Atkinson (who can apparently write? Although, let’s be honest, there’s no trace of that here), the copy of Life After Life that is currently sitting on my shelves, may just end up in the bin.

I'm a fan of Kate Atkinson, love her writing and of course I love this series. They are different than usual crime novels, and I love the style. The shining feature of these books are the characters, and how realistic they are. Atkinson is just so good at her descriptions and creating interesting people in her books. I can't get enough of them and can't wait to read the new book!

I don’t normally re-read books but even though I read them when they came out, then watched the TV series, I knew I was going to have to go back to Jackson Brodie before the 5th book comes out later this year to remind myself of the characters. Not your typical crime novel but there are murders and puzzles are solved by the end by Jackson, the German Shapherd of a man you’d always want at your side in a tricky situation. but what it’s really about are the characters. Characters so alive they leap off the page and feel like friends. Quirky characters with the faults and flaws Atkinson is so brilliant at describing but that just makes them more real. I was going to pace myself and read one a month while I waited for the 5th one but I’m off to get the next in the series now!

I’m a fan of Kate Atkinson’s writing and have read several of her novels. Not being a fan of crime fiction, though, I had not picked up any of her Jackson Brodie series. The opportunity from NetGalley to read this first one in the series has made me realise what I’ve been missing. For sure, crimes are or have been committed but the main focus is on the people involved and how they interact with each other and with Jackson himself. He is dealing with three seemingly unrelated unresolved crimes and a host of characters. As their stories unfold, connections are made. Resolution is found for some, often in unexpected ways, for others not so much. I found it all really entertaining - great plot structure and pace, and intriguing, colourful characters. Superbly well written. I’ll be seeking out the rest of the series as soon as I can, then I’ll be ready for the new one being published this year.

I thoroughly enjoyed Case Histories. I’ve not always found Kate Atkinson that easy in the past, but this was excellent.

Really, it’s a series of character studies, loosely held together by a crime story. It’s a diffuse plot with several points of view in the narration, but somehow it all works extremely well. Atkinson writes beautifully and paces her story very well so I found it very gripping and kept wanting to get back to reading more, but the chief pleasure for me is her superb characterisation. She creates a wholly plausible and very diverse set of characters whose portraits are forensic, humane and very clear-sighted.

Not everything is tied up neatly at the end, which I found a strength of the book. I think it’s a brilliant piece of fiction and far more that just a crime novel. I’ll definitely be looking out the next two in the series and I can recommend this very warmly.

(My thanks to Random House for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Case Histories is the first book in the Jackson Brodie series by popular British author, Kate Atkinson. The background facts on several unrelated cases are presented: the disappearance of a toddler thirty-four years previous; the slaying by knife in broad daylight of a solicitor’s daughter ten years ago; the disappearance of a daughter whose mother went to jail for the murder of her father twenty-five years before; an old woman who is convinced her black cats are being abducted.

PI Jackson Brodie, ex-Military Police, ex-cop, is the link between all these disparate cases. But as Jackson investigates, the lines dividing the cases begin to blur and people left behind enter each other’s stories. And it seems Jackson has an unsolved case in his own past as well.

Atkinson’s format may deter some readers, as the three cases in the first chapters seem both unrelated and unfinished, but persistence is rewarded with an excellent mystery/drama that will leave the reader eager for more.

Atkinson has a wonderful way with words and some of her passages are superbly evocative: “Right up until the end Victor’s mind had been as methodical as an efficient library, whereas Amelia felt hers was more like the cupboard under the stair where ancient hockey sticks were shoved beside broken hoovers and boxes of old Christmas decorations, and the one thing you knew was in there – a 5-amp fuse, a tin of tan shoe polish, a Philips screwdriver – would almost certainly be the one thing you couldn’t lay your hands on.” and vividly descriptive: “Her mad hair looked as if it had been groomed by a troupe of circus dogs.”

Jackson is a very likeable character, flawed, but trying to do the right thing. Other characters are recognisable as people we encounter in our everyday lives: eccentric old women, homeless waifs, fat geezers, precocious young girls. There may be no classic denouement, but this is nonetheless a clever and funny detective story.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Random House UK, Transworld Publishers Black Swan

This is the first in Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie series, and is a reread for me. I first read this many years ago and I still harboured dim and distant, vaguely unsatisfying, memories of the book, this time I found it a much better experience, the cold case mysteries slotted together with greater ease on a second reading. One of the mysteries, of course, is Jackson himself, a retired ex-cop, with an ex-wife, and a daughter that lives with her mother, and now working as a PI. He unravels murders that took place long ago, the seemingly disparate cases, interwoven in a narrative that goes back and forth in time, turn out to have connections. Atkinson gives us nuanced, understated and well constructed storytelling, beautifully written, with rich descriptions of characters, marked by their sheer ordinariness and everyday routines, lives that become extraordinary with the impact of death, brutal violence and the terrifying. There are numerous apparently irrelevant digressions, but which turn out to be anything but. A wonderfully immersive and offbeat read, riddled with black and wry humour. Thanks to Random House Transworld.