One Good Turn (novel)


One Good Turn is a 2006 crime novel by Kate Atkinson set in Edinburgh during the Festival. “People queuing for a lunchtime show witness a brutal road rage incident - an incident that changes the lives of everyone involved.” It is the second novel to feature former private investigator Jackson Brodie and is set two years after the earlier Case Histories.
WWW kateatkinson.co.uk/books/...

Principal characters

  • Paul Bradley, lost in central Edinburgh, is driving a rented Peugeot when he brakes suddenly to avoid hitting a pedestrian who stepped out in front of his car
  • Terence Smith a.k.a. 'Honda Man,' driving a Honda Civic, collides with the rear of the Peugeot and attacks the driver with a baseball bat, knocking Bradley unconscious
  • Martin Canning, a successful author of crime novels, witnesses the incident and throws his laptop bag at the attacker to stop him killing the prostrate driver. Honda Man does not respond but gets in his car and drives off
  • Jackson Brodie, divorced ex policeman and now retired private detective, is visiting Edinburgh with his girlfriend Julia, who is appearing in a Fringe production. He witnesses the attack and leaves his telephone number with Martin
  • Gloria Hatter, wife of millionaire builder Graham Hatter, under investigation for fraud
  • Tatiana, a Russian call-girl seeing Graham Hatter
  • Louise Munroe, a detective sergeant and single parent, who is called to Cramond Island to investigate a drowned woman and then becomes attracted to Jackson Brodie

Reception

Reviews were mostly positive. Justine Jordan of The Guardian enjoyed the novel, saying
Liesl Schillinger of the New York Times said, "Kate Atkinson shows again, in her inimitable bleakly funny way, how much easier it is to explain a death than to solve a life." In "no hurry to judge," Atkinson "acts like a hidden camera, dispassionately recording her characters’ deeds and misdeeds so they can indict themselves. Indeed, she has woven the technological accessories of the last 10 years into the fabric of her story, threading them through it like an invisible current into which the lives of all her characters are plugged."
But Amanda Craig writing in The Independent says
This novel was “shortlisted for the British Book Awards Crime Thriller of the Year.”

Adaptations

The novel was adapted for television with two other of Atkinson's Brodie series for the BBC in 2011 with the overall title Case Histories. This novel was covered as the second two parts of the series.

Cast