Linda's Reviews > One Good Turn

Stephen King recommended this author in a book column that he writes for Entertainment Weekly. (It was lying around at work and I needed something to read!)I took his recommendation seriously because in his column he went on to recommend "...and all the books of Robert Goddard."

I love to come across new authors. Years ago I just happened upon Goddard and avidly read several of his tomes before I ran out of the energy needed to handle the underlying sinisterness of his stories.

Now I get to go through all the books of Kate Atkinson. She writes with a light touch while telling a great, inter-connected story which covers policing, single-parenting, bad art, corporate corruption, & the exploitation of sex workers. An episode of road-rage starts the One Good Turn of the title into many more good turns. But the good turns are interspersed with some pretty nasty deeds including murder. Read her soon so we can start a fan club. Linda

Note April 15, 2010. I was reviewing my reviews and found that my review of Atkinson's One Good Turn gave me no clue of the story that so fascinated me. So for my aging brain, I've added the Amazon review.
Amazon.com Review
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 Martin is a shy, withdrawn, timid sort who, in a moment of unlikely action, flings a satchel at the attacker and spins him around, away from his victim.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.