Laura's Review: One Good Turn

One Good Turn (original review can be found here)

Kate Atkinson

418 pages

First sentence: He was lost.

Reflections: One Good Turn is a mystery set in Edinburgh, and begins with a horrible "road rage" incident in which a man named Paul Bradley is brutally attacked on a busy street in the middle of the Edinburgh Festival. There are several witnesses who play key roles in the story: Martin Canning, an author, who stops the attack by throwing his laptop bag at the attacker; Gloria Hatter, unhappily married to Graham, a corrupt real estate developer; and Jackson Brodie, an ex-cop and the only one to note the attacker's license plate number. I can't say much more without giving it all away, but like any good mystery I was drawn into the lives of these characters and the plot infiltrated my dreams (which was not necessarily a good thing!).

This book was a "New York Times Notable Book" for 2006 and while I would recommend it, in my view it was not quite as "notable" as others like Suite Francaise and Half of a Yellow Sun.