Case Histories: A Novel

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses child sexual abuse, the death of a child, murder, violence, domestic violence, suicide, and rape. 

Jackson is a private investigator and a retired police officer. He is the novel’s protagonist. He grew up in a mining town in northern England and experienced a series of tragedies the year he turned 12: His mother died of cancer, his sister was murdered, and his brother died by suicide out of guilt and grief. Jackson joined the army to escape his hometown and not become a miner like his father. After a stint in the military police, he joined the Cambridge police force. Despite Jackson’s difficult past and his profession, he still maintains a sense of humor and a hopeful attitude. He thinks: “[D]espite everything he’d seen and done, inside Jackson there remained a belief—a small, battered and bruised belief—that his job was to help people be good rather than punishing them for being bad” (81-82). This belief in goodness and his innate kindness are why he takes on some of the seemingly hopeless cases in the novel, such as the Olivia Land kidnapping. It is also the reason he visits Binky Rain.