Black Beast: A Detective Bobby Mac Thriller (Volume One) [Kindle Edition]

R.S. Guthrie (Author)

Book Description

What readers are saying about Black Beast: A Clan of MacAulay Novel

"Kudos to R.S. Guthrie!! I started reading Black Beast and from the first chapter I
couldn't wait to find out where the story would lead -- a real pager-turner
full of suspense and intrigue."

Becky Illson-Skinner, Mystery Writers Unite

~ ~ ~

"R.S. Guthrie is a marvelous storyteller...The development of his characters is awesome. You feel you've known 'Bobby Mac' all your life."

Kathleen Hagburg, co-author of Getting Into the Zone,
a Course and Workbook For The Mental Game.

~ ~ ~

"[Black Beast] establishes Guthrie as a bona fide talent."

Beth Elisa Harris, author of the literary blockbuster Vision.

Decorated Denver Detective Bobby Macaulay has faced down a truckload of tragedy over recent years. The death of his partner; the loss of his own leg in the line of duty; the companionship of his beloved wife to cancer; his faith in God to his inner demons.

After the man who ruined his leg and killed his first partner is executed, Macaulay becomes the lead detective investigating the Sloan's Lake murders. The method of killing in this double-homicide is so heinous it leads Macaulay and his partner down an ever-darkening path--one that must be traversed if they are to discover the evil forces behind the slaughter.

Just when Bobby Macaulay is questioning the very career that has been his salvation, he will discover a heroic history buried within his own family roots: The Clan MacAulay--a deep family lineage of protectors at the very core of a millenniums-long war against unimaginable evil.

"Black Beast" is the first in a series of "Clan of MacAulay" novels--a stellar first outing for new author R.S. Guthrie. The book is a page-turner that avoids meandering, written with tight prose that keeps the action flowing. The reader is taken inside the heart and mind of a common hero who will make you believe in good again--Macaulay is a believable, flawed character with whom each of us can relate and for whom each of us will cheer.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

R.S. Guthrie grew up in Iowa and Wyoming. He has been writing fiction, essays, short stories, and lyrics since college.

"Black Beast: A Clan of MacAulay Novel" marked Guthrie's first major release and it heralded the first in a series of Detective Bobby Macaulay (Bobby Mac) books. The second in the series (Lost) hit the Kindle shelves December of 2011.

Guthrie's "Blood Land" is the first in the Sheriff James Pruett Mystery/Thriller series and represents a project that is close to his heart: it is set in a fictional town in the same county where he spent much of his childhood and still visits.

Guthrie lives in Colorado with his wife, Amy, three young Australian Shepherds, and a Chihuahua who thinks she is a 40-pound Aussie!

Readers can catch up with what's new with R.S. Guthrie at his official site, rsguthrie.com , or discussions related to writing at his blog, Rob on Writing (robonwriting.com).

Product Details

• File Size: 690 KB
• Print Length: 273 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0983511209
• Publisher: Blu Pencil Publishing, LLC (May 11, 2011)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0050JC43C
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #112,714 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

65 of 73 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Good! And also Bad! January 30, 2012

By MaddyMac

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

RS Guthrie's Black Beast is a cool, dark, edgy thrillride. It straddles genre lines ably: police procedural/supernatural/thriller, which can't be easy. The major good guys and baddies are very well drawn - I particularly enjoyed drug kingpin/Obeah-practitioner Calypso. Guthrie treats the subject of grief (and implied survivor guilt) very well, too. Overall, where he sticks to his strengths - dialogue, action, police procedural elements - this is a ripping good yarn.

BUT: I kept wanting to shake Guthrie's hand and shake him by his collar simultaneously. The book is riddled with too many technical errors to count. Grammar is sometimes poor, and the book is rife with incorrect usage. Descriptions can be laughably bad. Guthrie often sounds as though he has swallowed a thesaurus and is burping up words at random.

Then there are the nonfactual facts. Samhain is not, and has never been, a celtic "God of Death." Rather, as most people know and history bears out, it is the day of the year when celts believed the door between the living and the dead swung open. Obeah is not a voodoo priest,as Guthrie states, but is a religious practice common to Jamaica and other areas. Freud did not say that God is dead - that was Nietsche. I could go on. Playing fast and loose with common information is a defect easily prevented by a little research.

So, much as I found to like here, the book is marred. The errors pull the reader out of the story.

It's clear to me that Mr. Guthrie has talent as a writer - he has some skills that can't be taught - but he would benefit from a professional review from an editor such as one can find at Poets and Writers or Writer's Digest.

I hope to see more of Mr. Guthrie's work.

43 of 52 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I'm 46 years old, and there is only one thing better than a perfect steak... an entertaining book!! May 16, 2011

By Unique1

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

And this book is definitely entertaining!

I've been a very avid reader since I was about 16 years old, I've read thousands of books, short and long. And as I get older, my appetite for a "better book" gets stronger every day. My hunger has been sated, at least for now.

Black Beast (A Clan of MacAulay Novel) is a fun, fast-paced read. It reminds me of a roller coaster ride I rode many years ago called The Screamin' Eagle (Six Flags). Get in, sit down, shut up and hang on!! Wow, what a ride it is! A book that starts out mysteriously but ties together nicely later on.

The main character is not what you would expect, a one-legged cop, "Bobby Mac". I won't say anything to give the story away, but let's say he is a lot more than what the eye see's or your imagination allows for. A very three dimensional character, growing from first page to the last.

There is police work involved, espionage, fantasy, religion, military twists, drama, things to make you angry, laugh and even shed a tear or two. I could see readers from 16 years old to well beyond my age enjoying this book. It's well written, a fairly clear path from beginning to end, with many, many leaps that make me say "wow, I didn't see that coming!!". I guarantee you will close your eyes and imagine what Bobby Mac is seeing, doing and hearing. I did.

I haven't been to Denver in many years, since Bush II won his first election. But after reading this novel, I think I need to find my way west again. You can tell the author lives in Denver, his love for his city is transparent, makes me want to see the city again soon.

I'll wrap this up by saying thank you to the author (if they read these things). I read your book in two days, staying up past 2 am to finish it. I even had to be up at 6 am for work, well worth being tired. I had fun, you entertained me and made me want more. "Black Beast" is what I would call a "better book". Plenty of quotes that made me think and want to see even more.

I can always tell when an author puts out his or her first novel. I can actually feel their life's essence in the book. You've put it all out there, and I can not wait til your next book hits my Kindle. Again, thank you Mr. Guthrie!

Buy it, then write what you think about it too. I can't wait to see how many other people love this book as much as I do.

40 of 49 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars An Amateur with Lots of Friends May 7, 2012

By Aaron Staat

Format:Kindle Edition

When I purchased my Kindle, friends warned me about buying books by self-published authors. Black Beast came up on a "customers who bought this also bought" list, and it had good reviews, so I thought I'd give it a try. I should have listened to the warnings. I also should've looked at the 5-star reviewer histories before now. After reading the book, I came back and took a better look at all those rave reviews. With actual scrutiny and not just scanning happy sentences, what I now notice is that the vast majority of the 5-star reviewers either have only reviewed this book, have "author of" in their customer name, or have given mostly 5-star reviews that are mostly for self-published authors. You can draw your own conclusions from that. My personal conclusion is that R.S. Guthrie has a lot of friends.

But let me get to the actual book. It needed an editor. Bad. I'll give you a mistake here and there; I've seen typos in many books by well-known authors, so one or two in a book is forgivable. I don't think there was a chapter that didn't have something wrong. Incorrectly placed commas, missing quotation marks, single quotes that should've been double quotes, misspellings, incorrect or inconsistent capitalizations. All things that an editor should fix. All things that scream amateur writer to me.

The writing and presentation are poor. The first thing I noticed was the Denver police shield that Guthrie uses for his section breaks. Not only does it take up nearly a quarter of the Kindle screen, but it looked so out of place that I thought it meant something to the story and I examined it for a moment before I realized what it was there for. Stop trying to be cute, please. A simple line or a few asterisks tells the reader what he/she needs without a distraction.

The writing style is also "distracting." Guthrie has this habit of pulling the most powerful sentence from a paragraph and setting it alone. I believe he was trying to give the writing some "punch," and that can be an affective method, but he does it so often that it makes the read choppy and tedious. He also overuses italics to the point that they lose their value. I started to roll my eyes at the melodramatic feel. Again, this is something that I think an editor could've fixed by combining paragraphs and removing the majority of the italics. The reading would've flowed much better.

Then there's the character development...or lack thereof. Aside from all the supernatural goings on, the main character (Bobby Mac) is having personal issues with his girlfriend and his son. We are told this over and over, but we never really see the interactions. There was a point where Bobby says to his son that he has a couple weeks off work and they should go on a camping trip, to which the son reluctantly agrees. I thought I was going to finally get some insight into this relationship, but instead I got a new chapter that started a week after Bobby returned to work. The same non-development is true of the girlfriend, so when either of them is put into a precarious situation, I simply didn't care. In fact, **SPOILER** there is a scene where the son is being traded back by the villain and I didn't even know the son was in the scene until the villain addresses him; nothing about seeing the terror in the son's eyes; nothing about being happy to see that he's unharmed; just more cardboard cutouts of characters. **END SPOILER** I remember hearing "show don't tell" from my English teachers. Editors probably say that too.

The dialog is stilted and is presented in a back-and-forth manner that feels like a high school play with actors just waiting to say their next line. A little bit of mannerism and movement goes a long way during dialog to give the characters some...well, character.

Finally, we get to the climax. It's filled with deus ex Machina. For example, **SPOILER old war buddies (who are so close to Bobby that they've only been mentioned once in an out-of-place, felt-inserted-at-the-last-minute flashback) drop everything in their own lives and fly in from all different directions. I guess Guthrie felt the plot needed a team of tough guys and Guthrie didn't want to take the time to actually set them up beforehand. One of these friends loves Scrabble so much that he randomly opens a game box that we're later told the son left out (but we don't him see playing; another lost chance Guthrie had at building the father/son relationship) and the Scrabble tiles luckily get arranged in a way to offer a valuable clue. **END SPOILER Ugh! That's just lazy writing.

Avoid this book. And remember to check the reviews and reviewers closely whenever you buy books by authors you don't already know.

More About the Author

R.S. Guthrie grew up in Iowa and Wyoming. He has been writing fiction, essays, short stories, and lyrics since college.

"Black Beast: A Clan of MacAulay Novel" marked Guthrie's first major release and it heralded the first in a series of Detective Bobby Macaulay (Bobby Mac) books. The second in the series (Lost) hit the Kindle shelves December of 2011. Reckoning closes out the trilogy. For now...

Guthrie's "Blood Land" is the first in the Sheriff James Pruett Mystery/Thriller series and represents a project that is close to his heart: it is set in a fictional town in the same county where he spent much of his childhood and still visits. The sequel, Money Land, hit the shelves Christmas Day, 2012. Honor Land, the third in the bestselling James Pruett Mystery/Thriller series is due out in May of 2013.

Guthrie lives in Colorado with his wife, Amy, three young Australian Shepherds, and a Chihuahua who thinks she is a 40-pound Aussie!

Readers can catch up with what's new with R.S. Guthrie at his official site, http://www.rsguthrie.com , or discussions related to writing at his blog, Rob on Writing (http://robonwriting.com).