Kate Atkinson’s very first novel Behind the Scenes at the Museum, was a prizewinner – ‘Little short of a masterpiece’ was the judgement of the Daily Mail. It was gripping from start to finish.

Her most recent novel, When Will There Be Good News, continues the detective fiction theme of Case Histories and One Good Turn, with Jackson Brodie, the former police detective, finding himself involved in a series of separate incidents. It was difficult to put this novel down – even more gripping than her first, I thought!

The first section ‘In the Past’ takes us back to the brutal murder of a family in Devon. Six-year-old Joanna is the sole survivor.

Thirty years later we learn that the psychotic killer has served his sentence and is about to be realeased. In Edinburgh, Detective Chief Inspector Monroe must inform Joanna, who has, apparently, reconstructed her life. Louise Monroe is also concerned about another dangerous psychotic who is on the loose and terrorising his wife and family.

We meet sixteen-year-old Reggie who works for Dr Monroe and has her own struggles with the criminal Edinburgh underworld and with the deaths that seem to surround her existence.

Jackson Brodie is heading north into this when his journey is fatally interrupted. The reader turns page after page wondering when there will be good news. However, the thriller is, in itself ‘Good News’. For me it was the best read this year.

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