Case Histories (Kate Atkinson)

This mystery has an unusual structure. It starts by describing three crimes that took place over a 30-year period (a little girl vanishes, an overwhelmed new mother murders her husband, a teen is killed in a random workplace attack). It then jumps to a present-day detective who winds up looking into all three cases, while dealing with the divorce-drinking-angst difficulties that fictional detectives often seem to deal with. I expected that the three cases would wind up linked somehow, but that's not what happens; their only real link is that the detective is investigating them. I enjoyed figuring out what was happening or had happened, and there were some surprising twists and turns along the way, but I can't say that I loved this book. Some of the threads remain too loose for me, and some of the events too coincidental to be convincing. So while the characters and settings were generally well drawn, and the mysteries mysterious, I didn't quite click with this book.