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by DAN DERVIN
For THE FREE LANCE-STAR
This very contemporary thriller, which reads like a high-quality novel, begins with several deadly vignettes set around Cambridge, England.
During a summer heat-wave, two of Rosemary's four girls decide to sleep outdoors in a tent. Overnight, Olivia, the youngest, disappears.
Told by his new and unsympathetic general practitioner that he was "morbidly obese," Theo is away from his law firm's office the day a maniac bursts in and starts carving people up, but his daughter isn't.
Michelle's baby was a "parcel delivered to the wrong address, with no way of sending it back or getting it undelivered." The baby squawks while Michelle's trying to keep up with her classes, and when the baby finally does nap, her husband, Kevin, dumps a load of logs on the floor, waking it. Still, that's no reason to go after him with an ax.
Many years pass. Two of the crimes remain unsolved, and the wrong person may have been convicted in the other. Are the murders unrelated? Or is there a serial killer lurking behind them?
Enter Jackson Brodie, once a policeman now a private detective. He may be a competent crime-solver but his personal affairs are a crime-scene of their own. His wife has just left him for her loverboy, and the two are threatening to take 8-year-old Marlee to New Zealand. Jackson is devoted to his daughter and struggles to protect her from all the bad stuff he gets paid to eliminate. He dreams of retiring to a bucolic setting in France, away from it all, but his French lessons seem to be always on hold.
The unsolved cases, along with the supposedly solved one, end up on his desk. Are they related? It seems unlikely, but Jackson becomes entangled with the now adult sisters of little Olivia and even more emotionally embroiled with Michelle's sister. Theo has taken up with a waif of uncertain background and aims.
Pulled along by these galloping steeds of narrative, the reader can hardly hang onto the reins. Our attention veers from Jackson's struggles to deal with his own dilemmas to the unfolding mysteries. In addition, someone is trying to kill Jackson--is it one of the suspects? But then we don't really have any.
Atkinson keeps violating the rules of the whodunit to create her own hybrid fiction. We care as much about her cast of characters and their present issues as we do about laying down the ghosts of the past. When we eventually arrive at the moments of truth, most of the plot's riddles have been solved, and we don't mind leaving Jackson at loose ends since he is a sturdy vehicle equipped for future adventures.
Atkinson writes with a droll sense of humor and a curiosity about her characters, which she inserts quirkily through parenthetical questions. In any case, our solidly crafted Jackson has plenty of miles left on him.
Formerly a member of the UMW English department, Dan Dervin is now devoted to writing full time.
Case Histories By Kate Atkinson (Back Bay, 310 pages, $13.95) |
