In One Good Turn, Kate Atkinson maintains the suspense right up to the last sentence. At first, when Jackson Brodie witnesses a road rage event that takes place in front of a crowd who are queueing for an Edinburgh festival event, he walks away.

Soon we are following the stories of a number of characters: Detective Inspector Louise Monroe, Martin Canning (the man who intervened in the road rage incident by hurling his laptop at a potential homicide perpetrator), Gloria Hatter, wife of a master criminal and a set of pink clad ‘housemaids’.

The novel is like the set of Russian dolls that plays its part in the story. Each event encapsulates others. A love story is developing between the lines too and as guns appear and disappear and murder follows murder, we wonder how Kate Atkinson will draw all the threads together. But she does in a superb concluding chapter.

Just like When Will There Be Good News, its sequel, this is a gripping crime novel.

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