One Good Turn

Critics

• Beyond the fringe

  One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson 396pp, Doubleday, £17.99 Once best known for her Whitbread award-winning first novel Behind the Scenes at the Museum, Kate Atkinson followed up three playful, picaresque family sagas with her hugely successful crime sor ... (read full critics)

  guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

• Unusual Suspects

  Martin Canning seems harmless. Fifty years old and never married, the author of a toothless mystery series about a girl detective named Nina Riley, he owns a Victorian house in Edinburgh that’s as snug as the bear’s hearth on a Sleepytime tea box. Ma ... (read full critics)

  nytimes published on Sat, 18 Sep 2010

7 Reviews

• 2 people find this helpful

  

  «Jackson didn't like change, he liked to think things could stay the same for ever. Change was insidious, creeping up on you as if it was playing a game of statues.»

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  Claire N. said on Jun 7, 2011 | Add your feedback

• 2 people find this helpful

  

  How does Kate Atkinson do this? She takes three different genres -literary, detective and humorous fiction - puts them in a bag, shakes them together and ends up with a book you can neither classify nor put down.

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  Lunarossa said on May 18, 2011 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback

• For a good 100 pages I was wondering what was going to happen as all characters had already been described in good detail, then something happened and I couldn't stop reading. I liked the descriptions and the story, even though I was shocked in two specific parts of it.

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  PJ Daphne said on Oct 30, 2011 | Add your feedback

• 

  Someone said it is much more than a crime novel and I agree, yet I found it in some parts boring and the plot is highly predictable... Disappointing

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  kaina said on Jun 30, 2010 | Add your feedback

• 

  One Good Turn

  A Jolly Murder Mystery is the subtitle of this latest enjoyable novel from Kate Atkinson. This is so much more than a crime novel and in my opinion it is wrong to see it as belonging to this genre.

  The author is an expert at weaving complicated tales and ‘One Good Turn’ is no exception. Taking ... (continue)

  A Jolly Murder Mystery is the subtitle of this latest enjoyable novel from Kate Atkinson. This is so much more than a crime novel and in my opinion it is wrong to see it as belonging to this genre.

  The author is an expert at weaving complicated tales and ‘One Good Turn’ is no exception. Taking place over just four days the action is fast and furious. At first I found it difficult to keep track of both the characters and the situations as they were introduced. The fairly large cast of characters and the incidents described initially appear to be unrelated but a gradual disclosure of information shows that they are all linked. Coincidence upon coincidence, incident upon incident which all seem to stack together like the Russian Stacking Dolls that keep appearing, along with the witty style of writing should keep you guessing.

  To some readers it may seem that these coincidences are highly improbable! Let’s remember though that this is a novel for our entertainment that sets out to amuse. I think very successfully.

  The plots and twists along the way all come together in an ending that certainly took me by surprise!

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  Lindyloumac said on Aug 28, 2009 | Add your feedback

• 

  very well observed, a real page-turner. loved the Jackson Brodie character

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  SpaghettiPrincess said on Jul 23, 2009 | Add your feedback

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Book Details

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• English Books
• Paperback 399 Pages
• ISBN-10: 0552772445
• ISBN-13: 9780552772440
• Publisher: Black Swan
• Pub date: Jul 02, 2007
• Also available as: Mass Market Paperback, Hardcover, Audio CD, Audio Cassette, Others and eBook
• In other languages: other languages Norske Bøker

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