Literary mysteries

[callmemadam]

When you're stressed out, there's nothing like a book you can hardly put down and One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson is just such a book. After enjoying Case Histories I was irritated by the critical comments I read about it. You see, Kate Atkinson is regarded as an author of literary novels, so she 'plays with the mystery genre'. No, she doesn't! She writes a very good mystery novel. Is that somehow an inferior thing to do? She then follows it up by writing an even better one. I read One Good Turn within twenty four hours, absolutely gripped by the complex connections, coincidences and surprising turns of events. Ex-copper Jackson Brodie makes a welcome reappearance along with assorted villains, thugs and victims; there is a very long cast list. By setting the story in Edinburgh during the Festival, Kate Atkinson justifies the presence of so many disparate and previously unconnected characters in the same place, while Edinburgh is almost a character itself. The book is also chock-full of literary allusions; does this make it literary? You could still enjoy the story without getting them. Highly recommended.

Comments

[white_hart]

I loved every single one of Atkinson's previous novels, but didn't manage to finish One Good Turn. I think that was mostly because bad things kept happening to dogs and that just upset me too much, rather than because of any deficiency in the book, though. I thought Case Histories was brilliant.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

I can only think of one bad thing happening to a dog and that was horrible dog. (Now a million dog lovers tell me there's no such thing, only horrible owners.) I was nearly in tears over a cat, though! I don't want to spoil the book for people who haven't read it but there is an interesting contrast throughout between attitudes to humans and to animals.

[white_hart]

It wasn't the dog's fault ;-)

I'm sure I remember more than one incident, so perhaps that was the cat - I tried to put it out of my mind as much as possible.

[(Anonymous)]

If nasty things happen to dogs or cats I just don't want to read the book ... it was bad enough when in a Mary Wesley novel, one character bit the head off a cockatoo ...

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Yikes! I'd forgotten that. Some of the animal cruelty in the books is being remembered by one character rather than taking place in the real time of the story. I get dreadfully upset by all stories of cruelty I hear on the news.