Customer Reviews

No Good Deed

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In Glasgow, Detective Inspector Orla McLeod and her partner Luke Tyler work undercover. They plan to bring to an end the brutal Tord Svensen's criminal empire. However, everything quickly unravels as either someone on their team informed Tord or they slipped up somehow because they are spotted as infiltrating intruders. When the dust settles, Luke is dead and the only person living who can identify Tord is the nine-year-old boy who saved Orla's life even as he watched his own mother killed.

Orla realizes that she must keep the lad Jamie Buchanan safe, but Glasgow means death for the youngster. She takes him to the Scottish Highlands, but Tord is coming. No one lives if they can finger Tord.

NO GOOD DEED is as good a police procedural thriller as it gets. The story line is powerful and descriptive even with the villain identified almost from the start. The action moves out as soon as the reader begins the opening paragraph. Yet Manda Scott insures that the characters are fully developed, especially the haunted Orla. As she did with HEN'S TEETH, Ms. Scott provides a Scottish police procedural worth reading by anyone who relishes a loaded fast-paced thriller.

Harriet Klausner

Manda Scott's No Good Deed is an excellent thriller that will keep you guessing to the end. Orla Macleod, the herione, has gone deeply undercover to catch a criminal. Just as her cover is blown, she rescues Jamie, a 9 year old orphan who may be the only living witness who has seen the criminal. Together they escape to her childhood home in the mountains--she has been taken off the case, but it seems to be following her. It appears there is a leak in her department, no where is safe. Scott's story is well done, with some clever twists thrown in. Enjoy.

First a disclaimer: My sister is Manda Scott's agent in the U.K. and she gave me a signed copy in June, 2001. I had not heard of this author and it was not really my type of book - no spies - so I put it aside. I finally read it last September while looking for an escape from the 9/11 saturation coverage. Some escape!

This book takes hold from the first page and simply doesn't let go. The opening scene with 9-year old Jamie Buchanan who has just watched his mother murdered and undercover Glasgow officer Orla McLeod begging him to untie her before the killers return is a classic.

This is a tale of an undercover counter-narcotics operation gone bad. Watch the characters; has there has been a leak? Is there some souce of information that threatens Orla and Jamie even as they hide out with Orla's mother? Orla's relationships with Jamie and the other characters is particularly well done, and Orla's mother is a great character in her own right. In fact, Orla's and her mother's past - they have come to Scotland from Northern Ireland - is central to the surprise with respect to the two villans in the tale. It fooled me and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

No Good Deed is about as good as it gets in the police procedural field. I had a bit of trouble setting the scene in the beginning and had to re-read the first few pages when I was half way through the book. Other than that, it is a fast-moving book, with characters that can be cheered or hissed as appropriate, a couple of twists in the plot and very enjoyable read. I highly recommend it to any thriller/police procedural fan.

I have been eagerly waiting another book by Manda Scott, and was pleased to find this last week while traveling through Scotland and even Glasgow.
I had been hoping for another book in the series previously written, but I guess there is a trend with g/l authors to move towards mainstream fiction as Val McDermid has done in her many series. Maybe it's a scottish thing, although Ellen Hart has done the same... of course she may be part British like her heroine in the Cordelia/Jane series. Must be an English/Scottish thing.
I digress...
This is a good book, a little nerve-wracking, and not as disturbing as other recent thrillers.
Nice book Manda! Hope to see another Kellen book though.
No Good Deed rocks!

Detective Inspector Orla McLeod is working undercover to infiltrate the drug ring of Tord Svensen. In the process, she suffers much physical and psychological damage including the loss of her partner, Luke Tyler. Orla agrees to take care of nine year old Jamie Buchanan once the assignment is over. Jamie, recently orphaned, is one of the only individuals who has seen Tord Svenson and able to identify him. This knowledge places Jamie in great danger. Orla takes Jamie to her mother's remote cabin where, hopefully, they will be safe. Unfortunately, they soon find out that is not the case.
NO GOOD DEED is a very difficult read. The writing is strong and sure. The characterizations skilled and breathe with vivid realism. However, the plot is extremely difficult to follow. The story is quite hard-boiled with some extremely harrowing scenes. However, on reaching the conclusion, I stopped and reflected on the fact that I didn't know what the hell happened. Bottom line: Good writing but hard to read.

No Good Deed is a suspenseful and tantalizing thriller that kept me on the verge of my seat until its very end. A newcomer in the world of literature, Scott captures the essence of a true detective thriller with the brilliance of a more seasoned author.

A Scottish undercover officer for the Glasgow police, Orla McLeod fails to solve a case. As a result, her cover is blown and her partner gets killed. But a nine-year-old may be Orla's savior -- for the child is the only one who knows the identity of the criminal in question. However, solving the crime by having the child speak up proves difficult. There are some rather interesting twists throughout the novel.

Manda Scott is a great new voice in the thriller/mystery genre. Her writing is sharp, insightful and gripping. No Good Deed is a reading investment. I highly recommend this brilliant and suspenseful thriller!

What a fine novel! Manda Scott easily fits on the team of Scottish female suspense authors captained by Val McDermid. Her writing is thoughtful, straightforward, and laced with just a touch of melancholy. Like her contemporaries McDermid and Denise Mina, Scott's characters are real and injured, but they have allowed their private suffering to sensitize them to the plights of the Scottish citizens they serve on the police force.

The plot is immediately gripping. You are easily captivated by the events of the first chapter, and you know this will be a book for which you'll sacrifice other evening and weekend pursuits to finish. While violent by the nature of the gangsters' actions, this book still manages to convey a sense of humanity and friendship that provides a counterweight to the sludge, rain, prostitution, and drugs that make the underworld go 'round.

Pick this book up! Manda Scott is a superb writer with knife-like insight into the dark world of the murderous and those walking wounded who pursue them.

No Good Deed begins in a gripping and intense manner with the failure of an operation by Special Branch to trap the criminal responsible for major drug and prostitution racketeering in Glasgow,the whole thing ending in carnage.The woman sent undercover,Olga McLeod,kills several gang members in the act of escaping and rescues a withdrawn 9 year old boy Jamie Buchanan,caught up in the operation.Her close colleague Luke is killed and tortured as the operation goes belly up.
She takes the boy to stay with Morag her mother in a remote part of the Highlands whence she is pursued by the bad guys;it also becomes clear there is a mole within Special Branch feeding information to the enemy.
The novel builds slowly-too slowly -to a climax in the Glasgow underworld and a cynical rapprochment between enemies in Dublin.

My problem with the book is that it feels less written than "WRITTEN" so self consciously literary and intense is the book at times.Everybody seems permanently on edge and over wrought and the prose strives for the poetic in a way that had me twitching with irritation.The women in particular are all damaged in some way,physically and psychologically,and the political dimension with the Northern Ireland situation looming large is especially one dimensional
The book takes itself very seriously and plods rather than moves towards a climax
Ms Scott can write but needs to lighten up-nearly 500 pages of intensity needs to be leavened with some humour,even gallows humour ,if the urge to read on is to be maintained.

The harrowing opening - a traumatized boy in the midst of a scene of violence in a Glasgow tenement - his drug-addict mother dead, another woman urgently begging him to help untie her "before they come back" - grips the reader by the throat. And doesn't let go until the final, riveting scene in this dark, emotionally and politically charged thriller.

The trussed up woman is Orla McLeod, undercover cop, and the attempt to infiltrate crime boss Tord Svenson's operation ends disastrously with the torture death of her partner, Luke. Now, 9-year-old Jamie Buchanan is a target and Orla's tightly knit, specially trained team, takes him to her childhood home in the highlands. It's a magical place to the boy, a vision of snow and open space, but to tightly wound Orla it's a reminder of all she lost in the assassination of her father.

Sudden violence counterpoints the boy's shy awakening, moments of unspoken intimacy between the team members, the quiet wisdom of Orla's mother and the secrets buried in the past and concealed in the present. The tension works around the unpredictable and brutal attacks and the sense of mistrust - Svenson is getting inside information from someone, somewhere. The violence is highly sophisticated - Tord is no common criminal, but a wily phantom with access to the latest technology and trickery - and Orla's team are equally savvy, attuned, and equipped.

Scott's (her first novel "Hen's Teeth" was shortlisted for the Orange Prize) spare, nuanced writing (reminiscent of Denise Mina) complements her taciturn protagonist and gritty story, keeping it from seeming over-the-top despite the graphic ingenuity of the violence.

I REALLY liked the main characters, specifically Orla and Jamie, but this book had many problems. It was too confusing in places, especially at the beginning when Scott drops the reader right in the middle of things w/o knowing WTH is going on. I thought at first it must be the second book in a series. Some parts didn't make sense like the reasoning behind some of the characters' actions and letting a mass murderer and drug dealer go free.