ONE GOOD TURN by Kate Atkinson

Jackson Brodie, the retired inspector, has followed his girlfriend to Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival, where she is appearing as an actress. He witnesses a man being brutally attacked in a traffic jam - the apparent victim of a case of road rage- which sets off a chain of events involving many other observers at the scene.

Atkinson is my newest favorite mystery writer- a master of the use of coincidence, in that she drops little comments along the route of her story to inform the reader, and to deepen the mystery.  She dovetails everyone's story together so cleverly, and with a gently amusing detachment.  

In this novel, I particularly enjoyed Martin Canning's character- himself a mystery writer who seems to bumble from one situation to another, living in a dream world of his own making, and nearly completely oblivious to the dangers around him.