No Good Deed

In a freezing Glasgow tenement a Special Branch undercover operation has gone disastrously wrong. A nine-year-old boy and Orla McLeod, who was spearheading the case, are the only ones left alive. Orla's a damaged woman, she knows about violence, so she's not going to let anyone else take care of Jamie.

Her writing has been called “powerful and subtle,” (The Times, U.K.) her plotting “original and shiver-count high.” (The Times, U.K.) Now 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....

NO GOOD DEED

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.

Chilling, intense, and stylishly written, No Good Deed places Manda Scott among the forefront of today’s best thriller writers.
From the Hardcover edition.