The latest by the author of the multi award winning Behind The Scenes In The Museum.

Most of the novels I've read recently have had very little narrative, I feel- but this certainly rights that balance. It's a fantastically pacy read, with the sharp and biting characterisation that Atkinson does so well, and the story cracks along. For my mind, she's back on form here- strange people that are on the edges of the world, somehow; Russian dolls with whipcrack minds and ganster's molls with humanitarian tendencies. Ex-policemen with difficult actress girlfriends, a lonely and troubled crime writer and a female police inspector with a cracked house. The story starts with a seemingly random road rage incident that involvves several bemused and odd people stepping to intervene, and then finding themselves entangled in a strange netherworld of murky dealings. Despite some graphically horrible moments, the humour is perfectly judged, and the characters are all on the cusp of perfectly believable life dillemmas; the action takes place during the Edinburgh Festival, when ex-cop Jackson's actress girlfriend is about to 'star' in an obviously terrible play. It's a beautifully judged story of coincidence, accident, and collision, handled with aplomb and style. And the ending is breathtakingly surprising, and satisfying, in a compleyely ammoral manner.

I agree, Anna. A wonderful book. I adored 'Behind the scenes...' sort of liked the next one and then couldn't understand what had happened with (I think it was called) Emotionally Weird. Felt so personally let down, because it was such a dog's dinner.

I also loved the one before One Good Turn, where Jackson is introduced as a character(sorry, brain on strike tonight, can't remember the name).
Isn't he lovely, by the way? I'm a teeny bit in love with Jackson. I think she is an enormously skilful writer.

Now that's interesting because I loved Kate Atkinson's first three novels, including Emotionally Weird, which I thought worked well within its complex and experimental framework. I've enjoyed her two 'crime' novels but they are very different to her first three and I've often wondered what made her change direction so dramatically.

That said I still think this new one is great and would heartily recommend it. There is a link, though, as the male private investigator is in Emotionally Weird. I've noticed that each novel Atkinson writes always has characters in it that were in the previous novel. A neat little trick!

Yes, a neat trick, but not tricksy in a yucky, up-its-own-bum way, if you know what I mean. I loved Jackson, too, his air of slight bewilderment, and I love the oddness of her people, and the surprise- the dead cat, for example. I too went off her after Behind the Scenes...loved, loved, loved that, felt less and less interested in each novel after that, and this one really wowed me, although it's not my genre of choice- doesn't matter, it's a damn good novel.