Rec. #3: Case Histories

What: Kate Atkinson's first foray into crime fiction was a massive success and an Orange Prize nominee for best novel of 2005. An award-winning literary novelist, Atkinson proves with Case Histories that genre divisions are, frankly, kind of silly. She introduces us to private detective Jackson Brodie, whose work on three cold cases we see through alternating points of view. Brodie's investigations continue in One Good Turn, When Will There Be Good News? (my personal fave), and the yet-to-be-released-in-the-U.S. Started Early, Took My Dog.

Comparable to: There's a bit of a Deborah Crombie flavor in the characterizations, but approached through a Mark Haddon-ish tone.

Representative quote: "Rosemary, their mother, said that she wished Olivia could stay at this age forever because she was so lovable. They had never heard her use that word to describe any of them. They had not even realized that such a word existed in her vocabulary."

You might not like it if: You are a bit squeamish about stories in which kids get disappeared.

How to get it: Available at most libraries and bookstores. Plus, IMDb tells me that this year BBC1 is presenting a six-part series based on the first three Jackson Brodie novels. It was only a matter of time, really.