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One Good Turn

One Good Turn

It is summer, it is the Edinburgh Festival. People queuing for a lunchtime show witness a road-rage incident - a near-homicidal attack which changes the lives of everyone involved. Jackson Brodie, ex-army, ex-police, ex-private detective, is also an innocent bystander - until he becomes a murder suspect.

As the body count mounts, each member of the teeming Dickensian cast's story contains a kernel of the next, like a set of nesting Russian dolls. They are all looking for love or money or redemption or escape: but what each actually discovers is their own true self.

Reviews

  • An absolute joy to read...the pleasure of One Good Turn lies in the ride, in Atkinson's wry, unvanquished characters, her swooping, savvy, sarcastic prose and authorial joie de vivre.

    Guardian

  • Atkinson is frequently very funny...while the tone stays light, the plot continues to darken....manages to be that rarest of things - a good literary novel and a cracking holiday read

    Observer

  • Atkinson, while having fun with the murder-mystery genre, slyly slips us a muted tragedy

    Sunday Telegraph

  • One Good Turn is the most fun I've had with a novel this year

    IAN RANKIN, Guardian

  • Thrillingly addictive...In One Good Turn Atkinson proves quite unique in her ability to fuse emotional drama and thriller...Imagine a Richard Curtis film scripted by Raymond Chandler, both a little enlivened by the collaboration...The mix is embodied by Brodie. Like all good detectives, he is a hero for men and women alike

    The Times

More in this Series

About the Author

Kate Atkinson

Kate Atkinson is one of the world's foremost novelists. She won the Costa Book of the Year prize with her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum. Her three critically lauded and prize-winning novels set around the Second World War are Life After Life, now an acclaimed BBC TV series starring Thomasin McKenzie, A God in Ruins (both winners of the Costa Novel Award) and Transcription. Her bestselling literary crime novels featuring former detective Jackson Brodie, Case Histories, One Good Turn, When Will There Be Good News? and Started Early, Took My Dog, became a BBC television series starring Jason Isaacs. Jackson Brodie later returned in the novel Big Sky. Her new novel, Shrines of Gaiety, is published in September 2022.

Kate Atkinson

Read more

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News

Kate Atkinson returns with Big Sky, a new Jackson Brodie novel

The first Jackson Brodie mystery since 2010's Started Early, Took My Dog, Big Sky will be published on 18 June 2019.
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Transcription, a new novel from Kate Atkinson, to be published in September 2018
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Extracts

A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson

A God in Ruins is the follow-up to Kate Atkinson’s Costa Novel Award-winning Life After Life. In this extract from chapter one, we join Teddy before he embarks on his final flight as a WW2 bomber, and return to Sylvie’s beloved Fox Corner, the setting for Teddy and Ursula’s childhood

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