One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson
(Black Swan)
It’s August, and in Edinburgh that means only one thing: Festival! So this month, I wanted to recommend a book taking place…in Edinburgh at Festival time!
One Good Turn starts well, as a seemingly unconnected group of people, queuing outside a venue for a lunchtime comedy show, witness a road rage accident which will change their lives in many different ways.
As they all become entangled in a strange murder case involving Russian prostitutes, dodgy property developers and even dodgier Fringe shows, one of them, Jackson Brodie (an ex-policeman and retired private detective in town with his actress girlfriend Julia) becomes a murder suspect after finding a dead body which mysteriously disappears.
One Good Turn is a lot of fun and has a host of great characters: Martin, the best-selling author (in town for the Book Festival), Gloria, the bored housewife and even Hamish the shop-lifting teenager. Walk down the Royal Mile this month and you will probably bump into Julia, the young English actress, handing out flyers for her dreadful Fringe play “Looking for the Equator in Greenland”; head for the Gilded Balloon bar and you’ll find Richard Moat, the has-been stand up and his “Comic Viagra for The Mind”. If it’s in Edinburgh in August, it’s in One Good Turn: anyone who has spent any amount of time in Edinburgh in August will definitely recognise the city, and the Festival atmosphere (including the lack of real summer weather; “The rain had left the cobbles slick and greasy”).
I can’t think of many books that take place during the Edinburgh Festival (the only one I ever read is the now long-forgotten, old-fashioned and out of print FESTIVAL by Robert Blyth, from 1977) but for some strange reason, those that do tend to be crime novels (Skinner’s Festival by Quintin Jardine and Mortal Causes by Ian Rankin come to mind).
Although there are criminals, cops and a few dead bodies in One Good Turn, it doesn’t really feel like a crime novel as such, probably because it doesn’t take itself too seriously - it is called “a jolly murder mystery” after all. For me, it read more like a portrait of the city and its people at a particular time rather than a real police investigation. The story being told from different characters’ point of view also reminded me a lot of the Robert Altman movie Short Cuts - and I’m sure One Good Turn would actually make a really good film!
I haven’t read Case Histories – Kate Atkinson’s previous book which introduced the Jackson Brodie character – but it didn’t bother me as One Good Turn works as a stand-alone novel just fine. But I am quite curious about the sequel When Will There Be Good News? out this month, just to find out what happens next!
Recommended by Olivier Joly, Press and PR Officer
August 2008
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