Kate Atkinson has already made a splash with her debut novel, which won the prestigious Whitbread Prize, beating out many eminent candidates - for example, Salman Rushdie with his The Moor's Farewell Sigh. However, her real fame came with the publication of Crimes of the Past, the first book in the series about the Cambridge private detective Jackson Brody. The novel caused a storm of delight among critics, colleagues, and the general reader; Stephen King himself became one of the most ardent promoters of Atkinson’s work. “Crimes of the Past” was followed by “Turn for the Better,” which was no less polyphonic and caused an equally enthusiastic reaction. This time the action takes place not in the university's Cambridge, but in the Scottish capital, flooded with tourists during the famous annual Edinburgh Arts Festival. Once again, Jackson Brody turns out to be a witness, or a minor character, or even the hero of a number of seemingly unrelated episodes: a blue Honda drives into the back of a Peugeot on a crowded street, and the driver of the Honda suddenly attacks the driver of the Peugeot with with a baseball bat, in front of all the honest people; a prominent businessman, under whom the economic crimes department is already digging with all his might, ends up in the hospital with a heart attack under very compromising circumstances; The low tide leaves the body of a girl with cross earrings on the shore, but the tide again takes it out to sea, despite all the efforts of Jackson Brody, who happened to be nearby. The local police see him as a liar at best, or even a suspect, but Jackson is much more concerned about something else: why does Julia, rehearsing the main role in the play “The Quest for the Equator in Greenland,” not answer his calls?..