With her first novels --- particularly her Whitbread Award-winning
BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE MUSEUM --- Kate Atkinson earned a
well-deserved reputation for writing ambitious, witty literary
fiction. With the publication of her 2004 novel CASE HISTORIES,
however, Atkinson's fiction went in an entirely different
direction. A smart, multifaceted novel with all the sophistication
and literary adroitness her fans had come to expect, CASE HISTORIES
was nonetheless a crime novel --- one that dared to challenge
readers while defying genre expectations.

Atkinson's latest, ONE GOOD TURN, is a sequel of sorts to CASE
HISTORIES, inasmuch as it features the return of its protagonist.
Jackson Brodie, the divorced father and former private
investigator, has taken his large and rather unexpected inheritance
to France, where he lives a quiet, crime-free life ("filling
up...iPods with sad country songs and feeding apples to French
donkeys"). At the beginning of ONE GOOD TURN, Jackson is back in
the U.K., accompanying his actress girlfriend Julia (about whom
he's having serious doubts) to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where
she is starring in a thoroughly awful experimental play.

Left to his own devices while Julia is at rehearsal, Jackson
becomes a reluctant tourist, too often winding up in the wrong
place at the wrong time. He witnesses a road-rage incident that
quickly spirals out of control and later discovers a woman's dead
body washed up on rocky shores. When the tide sweeps the body back
out to sea before Jackson can retrieve it, he becomes something of
a running joke --- and later a suspect --- down at the local police
station.

As for Jackson, he purposely removes himself from any
investigations, not even coming forward when he notes the license
plate on a crime-scene vehicle. The last thing he wants is to step
back into the world of crime, investigation and police business ---
that is, until he meets sexy, smart detective Louise Monroe. As if
by instinct, Jackson is back in the game, helping to track down a
missing body and an elusive killer, all while questioning the
desires of his heart and the direction of his life.

The description I've written here might make Atkinson's book sound
fairly typical, the kind of "ex-detective gets back in the game"
plot that is the stuff of too many crime novels and Hollywood
movies. To reduce ONE GOOD TURN to that level, though, is to ignore
about 95 percent of what's happening in the novel. For one thing,
Jackson is only one of a bountiful cast of eccentric,
well-developed characters, each of whom has his or her own role to
play in the car crash that opens the story. Perspectives shift,
horizons broaden and Atkinson gradually reveals the extent of the
many connections --- known and unknown --- that bring together
these remarkably divergent personalities into a plot that extends
farther than any of them suspects.

Although crime-novel purists probably resist using the "mystery"
term to describe Atkinson's most recent forays into fiction, that
is the most straightforward way to describe her two most recent
efforts. Certainly, readers expecting a classic "whodunit" will be
disappointed by that aspect of the novel. But that's not really the
point here. ONE GOOD TURN, although not quite as skillful or
inventive as its predecessor, is more of a collective character
study, one that seeks to explore the layers of loss and
disappointment that cloud all its characters' lives while adeptly
linking them together in ways that will continuously delight and
surprise readers.