One Good Turn

Modern society is built on the idea that everyone minds their own business and don’t interfere. If you see something horrible happen you might pick up your phone and snap a digital image of it, but actually do something? Why? It’s Somebody Else’s Problem.

So when a traffic accident on a crowded street in Edinburgh appears to be leading up to outright murder, all the witnesses just stand around watching as if it’s on TV. All except a shy mystery writer who has spent his entire life on the sidelines and has no idea why he’s interfering, but manages to save a man’s life. And all he gets for it is to be drawn, along with a bunch of other “spectators”, into a story that turns their lives upside down.

One Good Turn is a standalone sequel to the brilliant Case Histories, and just like its predecessor it’s hard to place in a genre; it looks a bit like your typical crime novel with a humorous touch, complete with mysterious deaths, human trafficking and an anti-hero who likes sad country music and can’t get his relationships with women to work. But just like the Russian dolls that pop out throughout, there are layers here, boxes within boxes, and a good dose of serious thinking under the comedy.

Not completely unlike Baxter in McEwan’s Saturday, the bad guy here isn’t really a mystery; we know who he is, and his job isn’t as much to be caught as to act as a catalyst for the other characters. The core of the novel isn’t the solution to a crime but the characters themselves, caught in the middle of life with all the little nicks and bruises that the years bring, and really much to caught up in their own lives to have time to deal with other peoples’... but they have to. In Not The End Of The World, Atkinson tried to fuse her contemporary storytelling with various myths, from the old Greeks to Buffy, and the result was... mixed, to say the least. She’s toned that down considerably here, and when for instance Robin Hood pops up in the corner of the character’s eyes here and there it only serves to underline the central themes of the novel, all those things that we all profess to agree with but rarely find a reason to actually adress in our everyday life. Is there such a thing as an unselfish deed? Are we really supposed to look after each other? What do you mean, my actions may have consequences for other people?

Towards the end, Atkinson may try a little too hard to tie everything together; not enough to break the illusion, just bend it a little. But while it’s not quite up there with Case Histories, One Good Turn delivers enough insightful, funny and realistic storytelling to outweigh its flaws, and just enough darkness to keep it from getting too sugary. It might be autumn in Atkinson’s Edinburgh, but even if it doesn’t end well for everyone who deserves it (or, indeed, ends at all – life goes on), I get a little bit of a warm fuzzy feeling from the book. I like Kate Atkinson.