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teresatumminello 's review for:
One Good Turn
by Kate Atkinson
(Probably more of a 3 and 1/2 stars rating)
Though I'm technically giving the two Brodie novels I've read the same amount of stars, I liked the first one ([b:Case Histories|16243|Case Histories (Jackson Brodie, #1)|Kate Atkinson|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1388801786s/16243.jpg|18001]) more, mostly (I think) for what seemed more like 'realism' than what's found in this sequel.
Atkinson's sly, ironic humor is still in full force, maybe even more so with her characters' commentaries on their own reality versus that of 'real' fiction. I was bothered by two events being concealed (perhaps this is one reason I don't generally read murder mysteries), though I thought the big, surprising reveal at the end was great. For me to disclose one of those two concealed events would be a spoiler, but the other (the existence of a third backed-up copy of a character's novel) seemed to serve no purpose.
The setting of Edinburgh in August was fun. I could envision my 1993 trip there -- unlike Brodie, I attended the Tattoo but none of the Fringe events; like Brodie, I felt I knew the Royal Mile after one day. The meandering, easygoing rendering of the characters' thoughts was extremely well-done; but the style of multiple, complete sentences being joined by just commas was distracting. For me, this novel could've been called the case of the missing semicolons.
Though I'm technically giving the two Brodie novels I've read the same amount of stars, I liked the first one ([b:Case Histories|16243|Case Histories (Jackson Brodie, #1)|Kate Atkinson|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1388801786s/16243.jpg|18001]) more, mostly (I think) for what seemed more like 'realism' than what's found in this sequel.
Atkinson's sly, ironic humor is still in full force, maybe even more so with her characters' commentaries on their own reality versus that of 'real' fiction. I was bothered by two events being concealed (perhaps this is one reason I don't generally read murder mysteries), though I thought the big, surprising reveal at the end was great. For me to disclose one of those two concealed events would be a spoiler, but the other (the existence of a third backed-up copy of a character's novel) seemed to serve no purpose.
The setting of Edinburgh in August was fun. I could envision my 1993 trip there -- unlike Brodie, I attended the Tattoo but none of the Fringe events; like Brodie, I felt I knew the Royal Mile after one day. The meandering, easygoing rendering of the characters' thoughts was extremely well-done; but the style of multiple, complete sentences being joined by just commas was distracting. For me, this novel could've been called the case of the missing semicolons.