Case Histories (2004)

Jackson Brodie’s three enquiries begin with families who have continued living around losses that an old file cannot contain. Atkinson gives the relatives different ways of carrying absence, resentment and hope, so their need for an answer is as important as his ability to find one. The humour can be very sharp without dissolving the sadness. Start with this first Brodie novel for an empathetic private-investigator approach, with several histories sharing the reader’s attention rather than a single tidy timeline.