One of the best novelists writing today

The most brilliant mystery novelist of our time

Probably the greatest living crime writer in the world

[Wexford] has become an old friend who gets better with age

Rendell has quite simply transformed the genre of crime writing. She displays her peerless skill in blending the mundane, commonplace aspects of life with the potent murky impulses of desire and greed, obsession and fear

Through the quality of her writing she's raised the game of the crime novel in this country

Rendell's mesmerising capacity to shock, chill and disturb is unmatched

'Atkinson is frequently very funny...while the tone stays light, the plot continues to darken....manages to be that rarest of things - a good literary novel and a cracking holiday read'

Atkinson, while having fun with the murder-mystery genre, slyly slips us a muted tragedy

'This is a detective novel packed with more wit, insight and subtlety than an entire shelf-full of literary fiction. The plot is an incidental pleasure in a book crammed with quirky humour and cogent reflections on contemporary life. Highly recommended. *****

While Kate Atkinson could give a masterclass on creating believable and intriguing characters, she also knows more than a thing or two about plotting...another class act

One story nests within another, like the set of Russian dolls that Martin owns...Kate Atkinson has that priceless Ancient Mariner ability that keeps the reader turning the pages

Whatever she does is done to the highest of literary standards. She has produced an engrossing, enjoyable, complex novel packed with intriguing characters, vividly imagined scenes and a compelling plot

An entertaining read, brimming with wry humour

High suspense and rattling pace...charged with adrenalin and a spry humour.

In One Good Turn . . . the deft and tricky British author Kate Atkinson shows again, in her inimitable bleakly funny way, how much easier it is to explain a death than to solve a life

Atkinson is a restrained, perceptive writer skilled at telling stories from multiple and hugely diverse points of view... Her prose is piercing, lucid and perceptive

Perhaps the most consummately all-round book of the year is Kate Atkinson's One Good Turn, a marvelous thriller so beautifully written you'd stop to admire the prose if you weren't so busy page-turning.... It features a killermost writers would die for, and a plot that touches genius. It's unalloyed pleasure from first to last

[Atkinson has a] knack for psychological portraiture and dark humor... Paradoxically, murder has given her a framework that helps liberate her insights on the living, as the lurking presence of corpses reminds readers there are worse offenses than bad parenting and worse fates than unhappy marriages.... Atkinson knows that the line between victim and tormentor can be blurry and that survivors sometimes have good reasons for guilt.... Astutely, Atkinson has noticed that the high-tech lifestyle has given rise to a high-tech deathstyle that makes the old props of detective fiction -- fingerprints, dusting powder, alibis -- as passe as a fedora

Crackling one-liners, spot-on set pieces and full-blooded characters help make this another absorbing character study from the versatile, effervescent Atkinson

'Civilised, funny, life-affirming and hugely enjoyable. I can't recall reading crime fiction quite like this before- honest, ironic, and cheerfully unselfconscious. I urge you to share my surprise and delight.'

One of the most brilliantly playful, witty and original writers we have.

'At heart a comic novelist, who explores the relationship between comedy and crime... In Case Histories, these skills have found their literary home.'

'Sharp humour, together with a number of unexpected twists, make this a typically pacey and intelligent read.'

Not just the best novel I have read this year...but the best mystery of the decade. There are actually four mysteries, nesting like Russian dolls, and when they begin to fit together, I defy any reader not to feel a combination of delight and amazement. Case Histories is the literary equivalent of a triple axel. I read it once for pleasure and then again just to see how it was done. This is the mind of book you shove in people's faces, saying 'You gotta read this!'