Thursday, May 5, 2011

One Good Turn

In One Good Turn Jackson returns, following his girlfriend, Julia the actress, to the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh. He manages to fall into all kinds of trouble, starting with witnessing a brutal attack by "Honda Man" on another man stuck in a traffic jam. Is this road rage or something truly sinister? Another witness is Martin Canning, better known as Alex Blake, the writer. Martin is a shy, withdrawn, timid sort who, in a moment of unlikely action, flings a satchel at the attacker and spins him around, away from his victim. Gloria Hatter, wife of Graham, a millionaire property developer who is about to have all his secrets uncovered, is standing in a nearby queue with a friend when the attack takes place. There is nastiness afoot, and everyone is involved. Nothing is coincidental.
from Amazon.

I enjoyed this mystery set in Edinburgh, Scotland.  It's a quick read with a cliffhanger at the end of nearly every chapter. And every chapter switches back and forth between the main characters of the story.   
I read this for my library book group, and while I found it an enjoyable read, the others felt just so-so about it.  They found the change of POV at every chapter confusing, and they weren't happy with it as a book club choice, which got us talking about coming up with some criteria for choosing future books.  Did we want to focus on a certain time period, writing style, or topic?  In the end, we didn't come up with anything.  They decided for this month to read a book that another book club was reading and which I and another member of the group have already read.  This gives us some time to come up with some guidelines.  I'm going to do a little research of my own and find some tips on choosing for a rather diverse group, well, age group anyway.
If anyone would like to share how your book club chooses, please post your ideas. I would love your feedback.
Now, it's time to catch up on my John Adams reading.

1 comment:

  1. I have never been part of a book club, but I cannot imagine the difficulty of trying to decide on a book. It honestly sounds horrible.

    I can't wait to hear your thoughts on John Adams!

    ReplyDelete