Product Description

A brilliant new thriller from the author of 2005's breakout favorite, Case Histories, again featuring the irresistibly reluctant detective Jackson Brodie.

Two years after the events of Case Histories left him a retired millionaire, former detective Jackson Brodie has followed Julia, his occasional girlfriend and former client, to Edinburgh for its famous summer arts festival. But when he watches a man brutally attacked in a traffic jam--the apparent victim of an extreme case of road rage--a chain of events is set in motion that will pull the wife of an unscrupulous real estate tycoon, a timid but successful crime novelist, and a hardheaded female police detective into Jackson's orbit. Suddenly out of retirement, Brodie is once again in the midst of several mysteries that intersect in one giant and sinister scheme. A triumphant novel filled with wit and surprise and intrigue, ONE GOOD TURN will delight the many fans who applauded Kate Atkinson's first foray into thrillers, and it will win her even more devoted readers as she continues to blur the boundaries that divide literary and crime fiction.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #417797 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-11
• Format: Bargain Price
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 432 pages

Amazon.com
Kate Atkinson began her career with a winner: Behind the Scenes at the Museum, which captured the Whitbread First Novel Award. She followed that success with four other books, the last of which was Case Histories, her first foray into the mystery-suspense-detective genre. In that book she introduced detective Jackson Brodie, who reopened three cold cases and ended up a millionaire. A great deal happened in-between.

In One Good Turn Jackson returns, following his girlfriend, Julia the actress, to the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh. He manages to fall into all kinds of trouble, starting with witnessing a brutal attack by "Honda Man" on another man stuck in a traffic jam. Is this road rage or something truly sinister? Another witness is Martin Canning, better known as Alex Blake, the writer. Martin is a shy, withdrawn, timid sort who, in a moment of unlikely action, flings a satchel at the attacker and spins him around, away from his victim. Gloria Hatter, wife of Graham, a millionaire property developer who is about to have all his secrets uncovered, is standing in a nearby queue with a friend when the attack takes place. There is nastiness afoot, and everyone is involved. Nothing is coincidental.

Through a labyrinthine plot which is hard to follow because the points of view are constantly changing, the real story is played out, complete with Russians, false and mistaken identities, dead bodies, betrayals, and all manner of violent encounters. Jackson gets pulled in to the investigation by Louise Monroe, a police detective and mother of an errant 14-year-old. There might be yet another novel to follow which will take up the connection those two forge in this book. Or, Jackson might just go back to France and feed apples to the local livestock.

Atkinson has written an enjoyable and lively story of no degrees of separation among the most unlikely cast of characters. Some plot lines have been left to drift, but it does hang together in a satisfying fashion. --Valerie Ryan

From Publishers Weekly
Having won a wide following for her first crime novel (and fifth book), Case Histories (2004), Atkinson sends Det. Jackson Brodie to Edinburgh while girlfriend Julia performs in a Fringe Festival play. When incognito thug "Paul Bradley" is rear-ended by a Honda driver who gets out and bashes Bradley unconscious with a baseball bat, the now-retired Jackson is a reluctant witness. Other bystanders include crime novelist Martin Canning, a valiant milquetoast who saves Bradley's life, and tart-tongued Gloria Hatter, who's plotting to end her 39-year marriage to a shady real estate developer. Jackson walks away from the incident, but keeps running into trouble, including a corpse, the Honda man and sexy, tight-lipped inspector Louise Monroe. Everyone's burdened by a secret—infidelity, unprofessional behavior, murder—adding depth and many diversions. After Martin misses a visit from the Honda man (Martin's wonderfully annoying houseguest isn't so lucky), he enlists Jackson as a bodyguard, pulling the characters into closer orbit before they collide on Gloria Hatter's lawn. Along the way, pieces of plot fall through the cracks between repeatedly shifting points of view, and the final cataclysm feels forced. But crackling one-liners, spot-on set pieces and full-blooded cameos help make this another absorbing character study from the versatile, effervescent Atkinson. (Oct. 11)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker
The second installment of the author's Jackson Brodie detective series is a complex jigsaw: when the driver of a rented Peugeot collides with a bat-wielding thug in a Honda Civic during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the outcome is seen through the eyes of numerous characters, including the whey-faced writer of cozy mysteries who comes to the driver's aid, the sardonic wife of a crooked real-estate developer, and Brodie himself, now retired and disgruntled about getting involved. The first Brodie book, "Case Histories," was propelled by a nuanced, psychological portrait of loss; here Atkinson's authoritative voice emerges only sporadically, and abrupt changes of scene disrupt the flow. Still, some of the characters, such as a snappy, overwhelmed single mother and cop, are finely rendered.
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Customer Reviews

This matryoshka is missing some dolls
If "One Good Turn" is approached as standard mystery fare, the reader will be disappointed. Kate Atkinson does not fashion her `mysteries' by following tried-and-true conventions, which can be a good thing if done well. (I'm not even sure this could be called a mystery.) In this novel, we are given a number of truly wacky characters that are thrown together in some sort of a melee, and then it's up to us to see if we can keep up with the meandering narrative that mostly shows how these people's lives intersect over a span of three days. That sort of six-degrees-of-separation thing is a tough trick to pull off, and it must have been tougher than I thought because the intersection of these lives hinges on a great number of coincidences. A few readers have mentioned the film "Crash," and that's a good comparison.

It's a unique read; these people are really odd and everything that happens to them is equally bizarre. A major portion of the book is dedicated to their back-stories and every now and then, there's a bit of action to create some suspense. It's really all about the characters--what they're thinking, what they're wishing, why they are who they are, etc. After a long time, one actually wonders if there's a plot hiding here somewhere. As it turns out, there is, but by then, it's no longer as pressing a need as it was earlier and even seemed like an afterthought. By the time it rolls around, I've lost interest. The author's use of the nested matryoshka dolls as metaphor for a multi-layered series of events, one revealing another, then another, so on, was wasted on a rather feeble story. I thought her prequel, "Case Histories," was exceptionally well done, but for me, "One Good Turn" doesn't compare favorably. So, three stars for shrewd characterization and a ton of genuinely hilarious paragraphs (that wry British humor gets me every time); the plot, on the other hand, was too little too late.

Flawed plot and broken characters
While I really enjoyed "One Good Turn", and Kate Atkinson's detailed observations of her characters' inner lives were as engrossing as ever, I couldn't help feeling disappointed by the time I reached the end of this novel.

The set-up of the novel was brilliant, with an intricate web of conspiracies and coincidences tying together all of the characters in surprising ways.

However, this cleverness could not be sustained. Several of the major characters were left broken and left behind by events (and I don't mean the murder victims), to the extent that they became ciphers, only to be reflected onto the remaining characters.

Some dialog was presented from several points of view, but it often became clear that the original explication had been almost deceptive in what was left out.

The final line of the novel should have provided the thread which tied the plot neatly together, but I'm afraid that I found it completely unbelievable given all else that had occurred.

A perfect piece of literature!
This is what a great book is all about: Intrigue, surprise, brilliant, witty writing and great character development. A perfect mix of can't-put-down and great writing, Atkinson is up there with my all-time favorites, Jim Crace, John Banville, and Ian McKewan.

HIGHLY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED FOR ANYONE WHO LOVES TO READ GOOD BOOKS!