One Good Turn

An absolute joy to read...the pleasure of One Good Turn lies in the ride, in Atkinson's wry, unvanquished characters, her swooping, savvy, sarcastic prose and authorial joie de vivre.

Guardian

Atkinson is frequently very funny...while the tone stays light, the plot continues to darken....manages to be that rarest of things - a good literary novel and a cracking holiday read

Observer

Atkinson, while having fun with the murder-mystery genre, slyly slips us a muted tragedy

Sunday Telegraph

High suspense and rattling pace...charged with adrenalin and a spry humour.

Financial Times

This is a detective novel packed with more wit, insight and subtlety than an entire shelf-full of literary fiction. The plot is an incidental pleasure in a book crammed with quirky humour and cogent reflections on contemporary life. Highly recommended. *****

Marie Claire

An entertaining read, brimming with wry humour

Mail on Sunday

Thrillingly addictive...In One Good Turn Atkinson proves quite unique in her ability to fuse emotional drama and thriller...Imagine a Richard Curtis film scripted by Raymond Chandler, both a little enlivened by the collaboration...The mix is embodied by Brodie. Like all good detectives, he is a hero for men and women alike

The Times

Delivers everything a good book should have. It's a fantastic detective story and a wonderful piece of writing...has taken the crime genre to another level

Daily Express

While Kate Atkinson could give a masterclass on creating believable and intriguing characters, she also knows more than a thing or two about plotting...another class act

Mirror

One story nests within another, like the set of Russian dolls that Martin owns...Kate Atkinson has that priceless Ancient Mariner ability that keeps the reader turning the pages

Spectator

Whatever she does is done to the highest of literary standards. She has produced an engrossing, enjoyable, complex novel packed with intriguing characters, vividly imagined scenes and a compelling plot

Times Literary Supplement

An extraordinary tapestry that is both hilarious, poignant and unexpected...Atkinson at her peak: full of wit, surprises and humanity. Not to be missed

Sunday Express

[Atkinson] writes like an angel and her sense of humor is wed firmly to her formidable intelligence... a wonderful read.... I remain utterly impressed by Kate Atkinson. I'll definitely be reading anything else she cares to publish

Philadelphia Enquirer

The suspense ratchets up quickly and palpably, as surely as when the doctor experiments with different settings for your new pacemaker. . . . One Good Turn is full of a zippy satire that provides a smooth skating surface for the reader to whiz through. This is clean, purposeful prose that drives the plot, wickedly funny in places, sometimes quietly insightful and fairly faithful to the traditional mystery form. Atkinson's novel is like something her detective might drink in the wee hours after knocking around the docks, something straight up with a twist

The Globe and Mail

One Good Turn is the most fun I've had with a novel this year

IAN RANKIN, Guardian

In One Good Turn . . . the deft and tricky British author Kate Atkinson shows again, in her inimitable bleakly funny way, how much easier it is to explain a death than to solve a life

The New York Times Book Review

One Good Turn . . demonstrates that no good deed goes unpunished, often violently. A fender-bender outside a comedy performance initiates a run of multiple murders, enlivened by comic set pieces

The Village Voice

Crackling one-liners, spot-on set pieces and full-blooded characters help make this another absorbing character study from the versatile, effervescent Atkinson

Publishers Weekly

[Atkinson has a] knack for psychological portraiture and dark humor... Paradoxically, murder has given her a framework that helps liberate her insights on the living, as the lurking presence of corpses reminds readers there are worse offenses than bad parenting and worse fates than unhappy marriages.... Atkinson knows that the line between victim and tormentor can be blurry and that survivors sometimes have good reasons for guilt.... Astutely, Atkinson has noticed that the high-tech lifestyle has given rise to a high-tech deathstyle that makes the old props of detective fiction -- fingerprints, dusting powder, alibis -- as passe as a fedora

The New York Times

Perhaps the most consummately all-round book of the year is Kate Atkinson's One Good Turn, a marvelous thriller so beautifully written you'd stop to admire the prose if you weren't so busy page-turning.... It features a killermost writers would die for, and a plot that touches genius. It's unalloyed pleasure from first to last

The Scotsman

In [Atkinson's] skilful hands, the occasionally grisly story that unfolds amid the festivities often has a surprisingly humorous, almost lighthearted spirit.... These characters are complex, being by turns philosophical, cranky, melancholy, bemused, and confused.... Atkinson provides some surprising denouements as she deftly twists the convergent narrative threads into one vivid tapestry

Vancouver Sun

Atkinson's voice rings on every page, and her sly and wry observations move the plot as swiftly as suspense turns the pages of a thriller

San Francisco Chronicle

Atkinson is a restrained, perceptive writer skilled at telling stories from multiple and hugely diverse points of view... Her prose is piercing, lucid and perceptive

USA Today

Acerbic, eccentric, and maddeningly perverse, she is a writer I always read with my heart in my mouth, as if watching a trapeze artist perform a high-wire act between cockiness and courage. Here, as in "Case Histories," she is splendid at the stuff of people's lives... Her observations about Edinburgh are easily as funny as Alexander McCall Smith's, though less benign

Independent

It doesn't really matter in which genre Atkison chooses to write. Her subject is always the irrecoverable loss of love and how best to continue living once you have glumly recognised that. . . . Her gift is in presenting this unnerving and subversive philosophy as a dazzling form of entertainment

The Sunday Times