One Good Turn

Kate Atkinson’s One Good Turn begins with a brutal act of road rage during the Edinburgh Festival and expands into a wonderfully tangled mystery involving fraud, murder and people whose lives collide through coincidence. Jackson Brodie is no longer a private detective, but after discovering a body he cannot resist becoming involved.

I loved how Atkinson lets the story move between several sharply drawn characters, revealing connections gradually while keeping the plot lively and unpredictable. Jackson remains an appealingly reluctant investigator, but Gloria, the wife of a corrupt property developer, was just as memorable for me.

The humour is dry, the observations often vicious, and Edinburgh feels crowded, theatrical and slightly unhinged beneath the festival celebrations. Clever, compassionate and enormously entertaining, One Good Turn is literary crime that offers far more than a puzzle, although it works brilliantly as one of those too.