No Good Deed
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
Manda Scott has written a powerful thriller debut, the terrifying tale of a lone woman pitted against an enigmatic killer—a man who deals out death without a second thought...
For Detective Inspector Orla McLeod, violence is a way of life. As a child, her own world was ripped apart by a brutal, unforgettable moment of terror. So when the Special Branch operation she is spearheading goes disastrously wrong, she will do everything she can to protect the nine-year-old boy caught in the cross fire. For Jamie Buchanan was the sole witness to an act of savagery committed in cold blood by a man rapidly becoming one of the most feared criminals in Europe.
Orla and her partner, Luke Tyler, had risked their lives to infiltrate Tord Svensen’s criminal world. Together they had gone deep undercover in a Glasgow tenement to get close enough to bring him down. Then in a series of harrowing events, everything in Orla’s life would change forever.
Now Orla finds herself haunted by the memory of what happened—and tormented by the guilt she feels over her own survival. What keeps her going are the promises she made to her partner Luke and to orphaned Jamie Buchanan. Jamie is the only person who’s seen Tord Svensen’s face, the only one able to ID him. Officially pulled off the Svensen case, Orla spirits Jamie away to the only place she feels safe, a lonely cottage under the shadow of a snowcapped Scottish mountain. But there will be no sanctuary for them in the Highlands. For, like Orla, the hunter who pursues them knows exactly what to do to survive. And that means putting both Orla and her vulnerable young charge in the grave.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Det. Insp. Orla McLeod goes undercover in Glasgow's underworld, then heads to the highlands with the nine-year-old boy who saves her life. As the novel opens, Orla is about to become the victim of the infamous gangster who brutally murdered her partner, Luke; her only hope is Jamie, who just saw his mother die and is the only one who can identify the killer. Injured in the crossfire, Jamie is taken by Orla and fellow officer Murdo Cameron to her mother's mountain hideaway to recuperate in the care of Orla's friends. But who are her friends? Someone on her team may be working for the other side and her mother's neighbors may not be what they seem. And even Orla's past including memories of her crusading father's assassination by the Irish villains he tried to put behind bars is not what she thinks it is. Scott's prose suits her tough yet sensitive heroine and her storytelling is equally unflinching. Graphic violence contrasts with wilderness beauty in a thriller that has plenty of touching moments, as when Orla and Murdo manipulate Jamie's computer records to create an artificial family for him. Scott, whose first novel, Hen's Teeth, was a finalist for the Orange Prize, delivers humane characters and supercriminals, romance without sentimentality, and adventure without easy answers. Orla McLeod's American debut ensures that she will take her place in the top ranks of fictional female detectives.