No Good Deed - Hardcover

No Good Deed begins with what most thrillers would have as their climax--undercover cop Orla McLeod talks a young boy into cutting her free to fight back as drugs race catastrophically through her system and a colleague is tortured to death in another room. Orla is a woman who keeps her promises, and she promised the child that she would look after him, forever--and this she does, though Hell stands in her way. In this radical break with the intense, but comparably gentle, detective stories with which she started her career, Manda Scott gives us a full range of thriller experiences--brutal noir as the police try to persuade Glasgow's criminals to give up a torturer gang boss of whom everybody is afraid, Buchanesque wanderings through the snow-covered foothills of a remote mountain district and a sense of growing dread as we struggle to understand what made Tord Svensen the vicious killer he is, what Orla will have to learn to defeat him. No Good Deed is a meditation on vengeance and violence and their costs, and what it means to walk away and make other choices; it is one of the most remarkable thrillers of the year. --Roz Kaveney

Compulsive reading from page one to the shattering conclusion...Manda Scott's writing is simply beautiful (Denise Mina)

Scott's cinematic style has both sweep and depth...Besides exposing the gristle and bone of human violence, Scott astutely probes the aftermath of crime - the loss of moral certitude that truly shatters the soul. (Marilyn Stasio)

Gritty, literate, and engaging, NO GOOD DEED is an exceptional achievement. Manda Scott is a fine writer, with a great future (Julia Wallis Martin)

'Uncompromising...brilliantly depicted' Gemma O'Connor

'one of the most remarkable thrillers of the year'. Amazon

Dark, taut and edgy, Manda Scott's debut thriller exerts an emotional grip that tightens to a twisting stranglehold. There's not a word wasted in this unflinching novel, which still manages to demonstrate the profound power of love. It's a joy to read something so intelligent, so direct and so beautifully crafted (Val McDermid)

'Manda Scott has bypassed all expectations by producing a dark and visceral thriller that's awesomely powerful and a work that should project her to the vanguard of contemporary crime writing...Good as they are (previous novels), these books are light years away from the scorching impact of No Good Deed...This is the best crime novel of the year so far.' W Magazine

Manda Scott picks us up by the scruff of the neck, drags us kicking and bumping along the rough side of life, then makes us fall in love with her characters along the way. Wow, just...wow (Laurie R. King)

'the story it expertly paced and grips from beginning to end...' Sunday Telegraph

'Another darkly gripping thriller that will keep you awake at night' Newcastle Journal