Case Histories

The reading of Case Histories, by Kate Atkinson, was interesting for me. I liked it, but it took me a while to read it. Since each chapter shifted to covering a different person in the complicated story, there was little momentum from one chapter to the next.

I won't describe the plot, because when I picked it up and started reading I knew nothing about it, which strenghtened it for me, I think. Suffice it to say that a down-on-his-luck private eye in Cambridge, England has three seemingly impossible cases to solve, and they end up intertwining. It is a mystery, but is not in the mystery genre, because it doesn't adhere to the shackling conventions of that genre.

This was Stephen King's choice for best novel of last year, and while I wouldn't go that far, it was an original, occasionally funny, occasionally gruesome novel.