Kate Atkinson's second Jackson Brodie novel, “One Good Turn” (2006), reminds me of a typical episode of Seinfeld, the 1990's situation comedy. No, it's not funny. Rather there are several characters with their individual subplots that turn out to be connected in surprising ways. Coincidences abound, yet because they are deliberate and expertly crafted, these coincidences are not as objectionable as they might be in some other novel. The way the different stories tie together is the whole point.

The story starts with a road rage incident in Edinburgh, one driver attacking another with a baseball bat. Martin, a lonely and ordinarily passive crime writer, intervenes, saving a man's life while putting his own life in danger. Brodie, a former cop and former private investigator, also happens to be on hand. He is in Edinburgh with Julia, a mismatched girlfriend who is appearing in a play.

Soon there are murders, seemingly unrelated to that road rage incident. A female cop doesn't know whether Brodie is a criminal, a witness or really an ex-cop with more insight than she has, but she falls for him anyway. Meanwhile her teenage son somehow winds up with the only copy of Martin's missing book.

Another subplot concerns a crooked homebuilder in a coma and a wife who hopes he never recovers. And there is so much else going on, including repeated references to Russian dolls, which turn out to be an apt metaphor for the entire novel.

Atkinson took a chance building a story around coincidence, when that is something most quality writers take pains to avoid. And she gets away with it. ( )

Really good follow up to the author’s first novel about Jackson Brodie. I like Atkinson’s style a great deal, and the light humor of her approach. The ending of this one made me laugh out loud. There are several story threads based around different characters whose lives become tangled with each other through the “one good turn” of the novel’s title, in which a timid man puts an end to a road rage incident by throwing his laptop bag at the assailant. This happens at the start of the novel, and all the rest is the slow working out of these threads, which eventually throw a very different light on the original incident.

I’m looking forward to reading more of Atkinson’s work. ( )

Plot was good, enjoyed how you gradually discover all the interconnections , fitting with the Russian dolll theme. Brody is not always the most likable character, but, like all the characters, complicated ( )

Just a note here to say that I have re-read Kate Atkinson's ONE GOOD TURN, forgetting that I had read it 15 years ago. I am pleased to see that I basically concur with my original review.

This was the second in the Jackson Brodie series and made good reading even the second time around. Since then I have read others:

ONE GOOD TURN
WHERE WILL THERE BE GOOD NEWS?
4.6, STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG-audio
LIFE AFTER LIFE
4.5, TRANSCRIPTION

ONE GOOD TURN is set in the Fringe of the Edinburgh Festival, and it was interesting to see that the Fringe of the Adelaide Festival shares many elements of it, although perhaps not road rage incidents leading to murder. ( )

(2006) The book follows several witnesses to a road rage incident where someone goes after the driver of a car that hit him with a baseball bat in Edinburgh. Jackson Brodie is one of those witnesses and is drawn into a related murder mystery. Being an ex-cop and retired, he is on the outside looking in. KIRKUS REVIEWA murder mystery with comic overtones from the award-winning British storyteller.Resurrecting Jackson Brodie, the private eye from Case Histories (2004), Atkinson confects a soft-hearted thriller, short on menace but long on empathy and introspection. Her intricate, none-too-serious plot is triggered by an act of road rage witnessed by assorted characters in Edinburgh during the annual summer arts festival. Mysterious possible hit man ?Paul Bradley? is rear-ended by Terence Smith, a hard-man with a baseball bat who is stopped from beating Bradley to a pulp by mild-mannered crime-novelist Martin Canning, who throws his laptop at him. Other onlookers include Brodie, accompanied by his actress girlfriend, Julia; Gloria Hatter, wife of fraudulent property-developer Graham Hatter (of Hatter Homes, Real Homes for Real People); and schoolboy Archie, son of single-mother policewoman Louise Monroe, who lives in a crumbling Hatter home. Labyrinthine, occasionally farcical plot developments repeatedly link the group. Rounding out the criminal side of the story are at least two dead bodies; an omniscient Russian dominatrix who even to Gloria seems ?like a comedy Russian?; and a mysterious agency named Favors. Brodie's waning romance with Julia and waxing one with Louise; a dying cat; children; dead parents and much more are lengthily considered as Atkinson steps away from the action to delve into her characters' personalities. Clearly, this is where her heart lies, not so much with the story's riddles, the answers to which usually lie with Graham Hatter, who has been felled by a heart attack and remains unconscious for most of the story. There are running jokes and an enjoyable parade of neat resolutions, but no satisfying d?nouement. Everything is connected, often amusingly or cleverly, but nothing matters much.A technically adept and pleasurable tale, but Atkinson isn't stretching herself.Pub Date: Oct. 11th, 2006ISBN: 0-316-15484-9Page count: 432ppPublisher: Little, BrownReview Posted Online: June 24th, 2010Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1st, 2006