Kate Atkinson, whose first novel, "Behind the Scenes at the Museum," won the 1995 Whitbread Award, has earned a reputation as a post-modern prankster.

		"CASE HISTORIES" By Kate Atkinson Little, Brown ($23.95)

Her novel "Human Croquet" opens with the line "Call me Isobel. It's my name," for example.

In her latest, the results are thrilling. Though not exactly a detective novel -- it is less a whodunit than a what-happens-after-they-dun-it -- this novel is sure to appeal to devotees of the genre as well as readers who are simply looking for a captivating book.

Case History No. 1 describes the disappearance of 3-year-old Olivia Land, who vanishes from a garden one summer's night, never to be seen again.

Case No. 2 recounts a brutal murder of a beloved 18-year-old daughter who is working in her overprotective father's office.

And Case No. 3 involves an obsessive-compulsive wife who, fed up with a screaming, pooping baby, kills her untidy husband with an ax.

Atkinson's concern in this brilliant if circuitously plotted novel is the exploration of grief and the sense of disenfranchisement that survivors share.

She investigates sorrow on several different levels using a myriad of characters. Most notable is Jackson Brodie, the private investigator we first meet while trailing an adulterous flight attendant. Brodie, familiar with violent tragedy himself, is a clumsy, hapless P.I. who spends most of his time trying to get out from under an enormous black cloud.

He finds his job "irksome" and "dull" and is not at all enthusiastic when the Land sisters call him to inform him that they uncovered a possible clue to their sister's disappearance 30 years after the fact.

Atkinson has many strengths as a writer. She is an erudite and witty prose stylist. Her plotting is deft and rich and varied intrigue connects and then spins around in new directions.

But in "Case Histories," it is her characters who leave such a lasting impression. By highlighting desire she can convey an undercurrent of heartache and despondency.

Shortly after killing her husband. Michelle longs for her fairy godmother to appear so that she may be granted the wish of restarting her life.

There is Amelia, who invents Henry, an attentive boyfriend, to avoid the "looks of pity and amusement" from her co-workers.

And of course, Brodie, who, on the advice on his French teacher dutifully reads the magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, even though he doesn't understand it, but takes more pleasure in his daydreams of a "French house with its white stucco walls, geranium in pots on the windowsills, a blue door, the paint peeling because who gives a damn about house maintenance in rural France?"

The expression "red herring" dates back to when hunters would drag a smoked herring across a trail to hide the scent of the fox. This would throw off the dogs' tracking and prolong the hunt.

In mystery novels, the red herring is something that draws attention away from uncovering the murderer in order to prolong the resolution. Here the murders, although described in delicious detail, fade in importance as the novel jumps forward to reconnect with each of the families years after the tragedies.

Mystery novels depend on the success of their solutions -- Was it a surprise? Was it plausible? -- but Atkinson plays with this conceit, suggesting that perhaps the identity of the perpetrator, while dire to the detective and to the reader, isn't important to family members who are forced to redefine their lives after the murders.

The ending is rushed and feels cobbled together, but die-hard detective fans will be glad to know that each crime is fully explained, although learning the solution brings no comfort to these characters, who perhaps have always understand the real truth of their loss.