Slacks for Ella Funt

I reread this in preparation for reading her new book, One Good Turn, which is sort of a sequel. The first time I read it was primarily on a long uncomfortable train ride. I was looking to be distracted, preferrably by something that wouldn’t challenge me much. A mystery. So I read Case Histories as a mystery and was a little let down. It doesn’t have the rapid plot twists and surprise ending that most of the best genre mysteries have. All the answers are pretty obvious with a third of the book left to go and who dunnit isn’t really the point.

Reading it again, I started with different expectations and read it as a literary novel. It held up much better this way. Atkinson’s characters are very real and richly developed, in a way that characters in mysteries generally are not. The novel develops through the deepening understanding of the characters, how they perceive themselves and are perceived, rather than the action of the plot. Thus the revelations at the end are of new perspectives on characters, rather than the solving of the crimes.