“When Will There Be Good News?” by Kate Atkinson (Little, Brown, $24.99)

Random acts have a power that no amount of planning can overcome.

In Scottish author Kate Atkinson’s third foray into crime fiction, a brutal, random act of violence sets the stage for three seemingly separate tales that ingeniously intersect. Atkinson illustrates that the adage about six degrees of separation is more likely to be less than one degree dividing human experiences.

As the title implies, “When Will There Be Good News?” will not be a happily-ever-after story. But in Atkinson’s ingenious hands, hope becomes an attainable goal.

It opens with a senseless murder of a mother and two of her children. The third child, a bright girl, manages to escape.

The story then moves 30 years forward as it picks up the story of Dr. Joanna Hunter, the survivor of that horrific crime; Reggie, a lonely teenage babysitter, and former police detective Jackson Brodie. A disappearance, a near-fatal train wreck and a teen’s tenacious attitude and lively imagination jump-start the plot.

Atkinson delivers a pitch-perfect thriller that careens to a stunning ending as she pushes together the stories of the three characters as well as pulls them apart.

Atkinson began her career by winning the Whitbread Award for her first novel, “Behind the Scenes at the Museum.” But she’s found her real niche in crime fiction and her three intelligent novels about Jackson Brodie.