One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson: A review

Kate Atkinson's mysteries read like literary fiction. Very, very good literary fiction. She manipulates her multiple story lines to construct a tight and intricately woven tale that is fast-paced and keeps the reader turning those pages. She writes with wit and humor, but also manages to convey the melancholy, loneliness, and regret of her characters without ever being maudlin. In other words, she is able to present a full portrait of their humanity.

Moreover, in One Good Turn, she delivers a delicious and particularly satisfying twist at the end. I loved it!

In this book, we again meet Jackson Brodie, the ex-army, ex-police, and now ex-private detective. At the end of Case Histories, Jackson had inherited two million pounds from a grateful client and had sold his private detective agency and gone to live in France.

He had started an affair with one of his former clients from that first book, Julia the actress. Now, Julia has taken a part in a production to be presented at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and Brodie travels with her to the city.

On a street in Edinburgh one day, Jackson witnesses an incident of road rage. A car has to brake suddenly to avoid hitting a pedestrian and the vehicle behind rear-ends the car. The driver of the rear vehicle, a mountain of a man, jumps out of his SUV with a baseball bat and attacks the driver of the car. The man goes down and his attacker turns his ire to the victim's car and beats it to a pulp. Then he returns to the victim to deliver the coup de grace as horrified bystanders, including Jackson Brodie, watch.

Before he can complete the action, one of the bystanders tosses his briefcase with a laptop in it at the attacker. Miraculously, it hits him and knocks him down. When he picks himself up, he gets in his vehicle and leaves.

The owner of the briefcase goes to the aid of the injured man as the police arrive. Brodie, who had been preparing to intervene, is off the hook and goes on his way. But he had automatically noted the license plate number of the attacker's vehicle. Thereby hangs a tale.

One of the bystanders was a woman named Gloria Hatter, the wife of a local entrepreneur named Graham. Graham is a builder who puts up particularly shoddy housing all over town, while bribing inspectors to look the other way. He also has other business interests that will come to light in the course of the book. He is just about half a step ahead of the Fraud Squad. Graham is a very rich and a very cruel man. Gloria is a desperately unhappy woman with a plan.

Another of the bystanders, the man who threw the briefcase, is Martin Canning, a writer of schlocky mysteries. Martin has a major role to play in this story.

All of the disparate threads of this tale seem totally unconnected at first. In addition to the ones I've mentioned, we have Russian prostitutes, teenage delinquents, a female inspector with the Lothian and Borders Police, a stand-up comedian, and others too numerous to mention. But Atkinson weaves her magic and in the end all of those disparate threads come together in a pattern that has the execrable Graham Hatter squarely at its center, and we finally see that everything really does connect.

This is absolutely a masterful job of plotting and of handling a large cast of characters while making each of them distinct and memorable. Atkinson is a formidable writer, whether you label her work mysteries or literary fiction. She defies categorization. And that is a good thing.

Poetry Sunday: Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver

How about we share another Mary Oliver poem? After all, you can never have too many of those. In this one, the poet seems to acknowledge that it is often hard to simply live in and enjoy the moment, perhaps because we are afraid it can't last. She urges us to give in to that moment and fully experience the joy. Although "much can never be redeemed, still, life has some possibility left." Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is no...

Poetry Sunday: Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney

My mother was a farm wife and a prodigious canner. She canned fruit and vegetables from the garden, even occasionally meat. But the best thing that she canned, in my opinion, was blackberry jam. Even as I type those words my mouth waters! Of course, before she could make that jam, somebody had to pick the blackberries. And that somebody was quite often named Dorothy. I think Seamus Heaney might have spent some time among the briars plucking those delicious black fruits as well, so he would have known that "Once off the bush the fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour." They don't keep; you have to get that jam made in a hurry! Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust ...

Poetry Sunday: Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman

You probably remember poet Amanda Gorman from her appearance at the inauguration of President Biden. She read her poem "The Hill We Climb" on that occasion. After the senseless slaughter in Uvalde this week, she was inspired to write another poem which was published in The New York Times. It seemed perfect for the occasion and so I stole it in order to feature it here, just in case you didn't get a chance to read it in the Times . Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman Everything hurts, Our hearts shadowed and strange, Minds made muddied and mute. We carry tragedy, terrifying and true. And yet none of it is new; We knew it as home, As horror, As heritage. Even our children Cannot be children, Cannot be. Everything hurts. It’s a hard time to be alive, And even harder to stay that way. We’re burdened to live out these days, While at the same time, blessed to outlive them. This alarm is how we know We must be altered — That we must differ or die, That we must triumph or try. ...

The Nature of Things

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