"No Good Deed," by Manda Scott

FM's rating:

1. Premise 7
2. Prose 8
3. Plot 6
4. Characters 9
5. Overall 7

Comments (optional - but try to keep it under 3000 words!)

The story is a good one, but only enough to fill about 100 pages of this 304-page book.  The rest is unnecessarily drawn-out character development and “human interest” of a kind that has unfortunately been the stereotype of female suspense writers.  (The best female writers of this genre don’t fall into that stereotype, and they are among my favorites.) To Manda Scott’s credit, however, she didn’t feel obligated to put in any sex scenes, or even romantic ones, and none of her characters ever used the word “arse” or the word “shite” even once (as her colleagues in Scotland and other parts of the UK are prone to do)!  The plot was unnecessarily convoluted, even for this type of book, and created confusion that detracted – too many events and “clues” of questionable relevance for most readers to keep track of.   This did just enough damage in my view to preclude an “8” rating.