When Will There Be Good News?: A Novel (Hardcover)

by Kate Atkinson (Author)
Key Phrases: posh school, funny old world, warrant card, Joanna Hunter, Neil Hunter, Andrew Decker (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In Atkinson's stellar third novel to feature ex-cop turned PI Jackson Brodie (after One Good Turn), unrelated characters and plot lines collide with momentous results. On a country road, six-year-old Joanna Mason is the only survivor of a knife attack that leaves her mother and two siblings dead. Thirty years later, after boarding the wrong train in Yorkshire, Brodie is almost killed when the train crashes. He's saved by 16-year-old Regina Reggie Chase, the nanny of Dr. Joanna Hunter, née Mason. In the chaos following the crash, Brodie ends up with the wallet of Andrew Decker, the recently released man convicted of murdering the Mason family. Enter DCI Louise Monroe, Brodie's former love interest, who's tracking Decker because of a recent case involving a similar family and crime. When Dr. Hunter disappears, Reggie is convinced she's been kidnapped and enlists the reluctant Brodie to track her down. A lesser author would buckle under so many story lines, but Atkinson juggles them brilliantly, simultaneously tying up loose ends from Turn and opening new doors for further Brodie misadventures. (Sept.)
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From Bookmarks Magazine
Critics greeted the return of Jackson Brodie enthusiastically, and many stated that When Will There Be Good News? is the best installment of the three-book series. Atkinson’s mysteries develop naturally from her charmingly flawed characters and display her keen insight into human nature. Her control of the plot is absolute: it ratchets up the tension while the narrative accelerates to breakneck speeds. Atkinson’s razor-sharp humor and literary games add to the fun without distracting from the story. A few critics lamented the heavy use of coincidences and mistaken identities, but the Guardian perceived an added layer of meaning to such plot contrivances. Readers are forewarned: they may not be able to put down this riveting, entertaining, and clever novel until they’ve turned the final page.
Copyright 2008 Bookmarks Publishing LLC

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; First Edition edition (September 24, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316154857
• ISBN-13: 978-0316154857
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (61 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #37,641 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A mystery that stretches the boundaries of the genre, October 15, 2008

By	Bookreporter.com (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

Kate Atkinson's most recent novels have seemed, on the surface of things, like a radical departure for a Whitbread Award-winning novelist whose previous works were noted for their use of magical realism and their unusual family dynamics. With CASE HISTORIES, however, the first book featuring detective Jackson Brodie, Atkinson took her well-established skill at exploring characters and relationships, and applied it to an entirely new genre --- the mystery. Since then, with ONE GOOD TURN and now with WHEN WILL THERE BE GOOD NEWS?, Atkinson continues to push the boundaries of the mystery genre, writing intricate, suspenseful character studies that are bound to appeal even to literary purists who would swear they had never read a mystery novel in their lives.

These three books are loosely interconnected, focusing at least in part on Brodie and Edinburgh police inspector Louise Monroe. In ONE GOOD TURN, the sexual tension that defined Jackson and Louise's interactions never came to fruition; in WHEN WILL THERE BE GOOD NEWS?, readers will be intrigued to discover that both main characters, in the intervening months, have made very similar choices in their personal lives, choices that will continue to complicate their personal and professional relationships.

But, as with the previous titles in this series, the private detective and the police inspector are, unusually, hardly the most important characters in the novel. Instead, Atkinson introduces a good dozen characters, each of whom carries his or her own tale of love, loss and betrayal, and whose stories come together in remarkable and, at times, surprising ways.

Central to the story is Joanna Hunter, now a successful physician and new mother living in Edinburgh. As a child, however, Joanna gained notoriety for being the only survivor of a brutal triple murder that left her mother, older sister and baby brother dead. The killer was sentenced to life in prison, but after 30 years he's now out on parole, and Joanna is haunted by fears that the media --- and the assailant himself --- might find her and destroy the new life she's built for herself.

Part of that new life includes Joanna's husband Neil, a somewhat shady businessman with secrets of his own, and mother's helper Reggie (short for Regina), a teenager studying for her A-levels and adopting Joanna as a surrogate mother, since few people know that Reggie's own mother died more than a year ago. Her older brother Billy is up to no good, so when Joanna disappears, Reggie doesn't know where to turn.

That is, until she encounters Louise Monroe, who is investigating a suspicious fire at one of Neil's business establishments, and Jackson Brodie, whom Reggie meets by chance after he's been seriously injured in a brutal and bloody train derailment. Each of these three have their own reasons for delving into the mysteries that surround them.

Besides being passably engaging mysteries, Atkinson's latest novels are utterly engrossing joint character studies. As she develops each character independently, she also, increasingly, shows them in relation to one another, developing layers of interconnection that go beyond coincidence. Language also connects the subplots in playful ways. The themes of the book, however, are a good deal darker --- focusing on young women alone in the world, on the loneliness of those who find themselves still alive when everyone they love has died, on the difficulty of forming and maintaining relationships in a fundamentally flawed world.

WHEN WILL THERE BE GOOD NEWS? offers sophisticated readers a mystery that stretches the boundaries of the genre, opening up the story to provide portraits of a community of sorts, united by proximity and by loss.

--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One Common Thread..., January 20, 2009

By	Laurel-Rain Snow - Raine- "Author of 'Miles t... (Fresno, California) - See all my reviews

A woman and three children are living in the country; a husband is off writing his novels and having affairs - in the city - and against this backdrop, the unexpected happens. On an otherwise blissful day, an intruder stalks into all of their lives, murdering the woman and two of her children, while another child cowers in the field nearby, unharmed.

Except, of course, for that nasty post-traumatic stress disorder that clings to her - forever.

This is the past, to which the reader is introduced in When Will There Be Good News?: A Novel, followed by an influx of seemingly unrelated characters - Reggie, who is Dr. Hunter's nanny; Louise, an unhappily-married police officer, fondly recalling a love she almost had, a long time ago; Jackson, married twice and cuckolded by a lover, whose infant child may inadvertently belong to him; and Ms. MacDonald, a former teacher, now retired. Somehow, all of these disparate individuals are connected by at least one common thread.

A train wreck...Indeed, as one character hurtles along on a train headed toward London, or so Jackson believes, it is actually headed toward Edinburgh. When it lurches and turns on its side, its passengers tossed about, everything becomes tangled - literally. When Jackson ends up in hospital, miraculously kept alive by CPR administered by one Reggie Chase, he has the wrong ID on him. This fact sets the tale in a completely different direction.

Unbeknownst to these two characters - Reggie, the nanny, and Jackson, a former police detective - Dr. Hunter and her baby have gone missing. Ah, yes - Dr. Hunter is the former Joanna Mason, the child accidentally left alive by the murderer all those years ago - and to compound the case even further, the murderer, one Andrew Decker, has just been released from prison.

With the alternating storylines and characters, careening toward the answers to so many questions, I kept turning these pages, almost breathless, anticipating the conclusions. And, of course, there are many surprises at the end, which makes this more than an ordinary mystery, or a simple love story, and certainly not a predictable drama.

This writer skillfully teases the reader, pushing and pulling the facts around, until they arrange themselves in such a clever way. I found myself going back to the beginning again, wondering what I might have missed - what clue I had overlooked - in order to have been so stunned by the ending.

I have another of Ms. Atkinson's books on my stack - One Good Turn: A Jolly Murder Mystery - which will receive my attention very soon.

Laurel-Rain Snow
Author of: An Accidental Life, etc.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Atkinson and her Niche in the Genre, November 20, 2008

By	K. L. Cotugno (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Kate Atkinson has found her true niche. She writes like nobody else -- it's astounding how she can get into the minds of so many disparate people, tell the story from so many vantages, and despite leaving some questions unanswered, manage to bring it all together in a satisfying whole. She challenges the reader to fill in some gaps. While there are dark aspect to this story, there are as many that are hilarious, and Atkinson's accurate ear for dialogue make for a lively read. This is not Scottish noir, such as the Glaswegian novels of Denise Mina, nor are they police procedurals, such as the series by Ian Rankin (great to think of Inspectors Rebus and Monroe on the same force), but Atkinson is on her way to a franchise that is truly original where past histories and their collisions in the present dramatically affect the future.