No Good Deed: Book One of the Mark Taylor Series (A Psychological Thriller)
Mark Taylor discovers first hand that no good deed goes unpunished when the old camera he found during a freelance job in an Afghanistan bazaar gives him more than great photos. It triggers dreams of disasters. Tragedies that happen exactly as he envisions them. He learns that not only can he see the future, he can change it. Then the unthinkable happened and everyone ignored his frantic warnings. Thousands die. Suddenly, the Feds are pounding on his door and the name they have for Taylor isn’t urban hero. It’s enemy combatant. And, it means they can do anything they want to him. Anything at all.
Word count: 92,000
Approx. 368 pagesMark Taylor discovers first hand that no good deed goes unpunished when the old camera he found during a freelance job in an Afghanistan bazaar gives him more than great photos. It triggers dreams of disasters. Tragedies that happen exactly as he envisions them. He learns that not only can he see the future, he can change it. Then the unthinkable happened and everyone ignored his frantic warnings. Thousands die. Suddenly, the Feds are pounding on his door and the name they have for Taylor isn’t urban hero. It’s enemy combatant. And, it means they can do anything they want to him. Anything at all.
Word count: 92,000
Approx. 368 pages
List Price: $ 2.99
Price: $ 2.99
Wonderful Book!,
I’m a prolific reader who nearly always reads the reviews here on Amazon before purchasing a book, but I have never reviewed a book myself. Thought about it often, but have never actually taken the time to write one. I’m also a new Kindle owner who has spent a lot of time searching the kindle book discussions here and at Kindleboards.com before my kindle arrived, looking for cheap, but interesting books to download. I have to say that I was highly skeptical about downloading books from indie authors, mistakingly thinking that the books would be of low quality. On the other hand, I have found many books by indie authors that looked interesting and had good reviews. I went ahead and downloaded around 20 books, all under $3.00( I have to say that price was a big factor since I was trying to stretch out an Amazon gift card to the max). No Good Deed was the first one I read and I was not disappointed. This book had everything that I always look for in a book, well developed characters that were beleivable and made you care about what happened to them, a captivating story that had me glued to my kindle to the end, a little action, a little romance, and that paranormal element that often atracts me to a book. The only thing I was disappointed in was the length….I didn’t want the book to end.
I’ll never judge a book again by whether the author is published by a publishing house or on e-books. I’m sure there are many other good indie authors out there and I’m looking forward to discovering them. I’m also looking forward to more books by Mary McDonald and hope there’s a new one out soon.
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|From “Red Adept Reviews”,
Plot/Storyline: 5 Stars
The plot to the novel was not only unique, but it was wonderfully executed. The book opened with Mark Taylor, the main character, trying to find a specific apartment. Soon, I learned that he was actually looking for a baby that would die if he didn’t get there in time to warn someone. The book only got better from there.
After Mark was arrested, I thought the tension would lessen, but Ms. McDonald managed to keep ratcheting the suspense with every chapter. The story unfolded skillfully, giving me just enough information at the right times to keep me wanting more without making me feel like I was being dragged. I just couldn’t put the book down. I had to know what happened to Mark and how it would all turn out.
One thing that I really liked was how the author handled the political question of whether torture is a viable means of getting answers and information from terrorists. Through different character viewpoints, she showed both sides of the debate. Rather than taking one side or the other, the book allows the reader to really think about the issue and make their own conclusions.
There was one instance of severe coincidence that allowed Mark’s girlfriend to save some of his personal effects. It was just a matter of lucky timing, I guess, but after so long, it was really lucky timing. I think that portion could have been done differently to somehow avoid the happenstance measure.
I think the description gives away too much of the storyline. So, if you happen to be reading this review on my blog, or reading it prior to reading the description, to get the most out of the suspense, skip the book description on the Amazon Page. I was lucky in that I hadn’t read it when I started the book.
The ending was especially nice in that, while it wrapped everthing up nicely, it didn’t meander around to explain later events. It ended abruptly at a perfect point in the story.
Characters: 5 Stars
Mark Taylor was a deep, complex character. He was a good hero, but had enough flaws to be completely believable. The way he handled his time in prison portrayed him as just a regular guy and pretty much followed that route throughout the book. This gave him a particularly sympathetic feel to which readers could relate.
The other characters were pretty well done for side characters. The book mainly focused on Mark, so too much development in the rest would have been tedious. There was just enough information given about one of Mark’s “jailers” to give the reader some empathy on that score, but not so much as to overpower the story.
Writing Style: 4 3/4 Stars
The sentence structuring was wonderfully fluid with a skill belying a first time novelist. The descriptions were so well done that I could have been watching a movie. The dialogue was great in the first half, but it inexplicably went downhill in the third quarter when Mark seems to develop a Southern accent of sorts. This did clear up by the last quarter.
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|Disturbing in its Relevance,
Wow. I came across this book on the Kindle boards and after reading the sample, I just had to finish it.
The novel is a commentary on post-9/11 excesses, wrapped in a paranormal fantasy, tucked into a tale of romantic suspense. While written recently, the story is set in 2001-2002, shortly after the attacks.
Mark Taylor, a typical nice guy and successful Chicago photographer, buys a vintage camera in a bazaar overseas and finds that it has a strange little quirk..it lets him see tragedies and disasters before they happen by mysteriously developing photos he didn’t take at the end of any roll of film he shoots. He then dreams about the incident that night and has very little time the next day to try to stop what’s about to happen.
The story opens with Mark saving a baby who drowns in the bath because its mother is momentarily distracted. Mark rushes in, gives the baby CPR and saves the day. Instead of getting a medal from the city, he’s arrested on the spot and tossed into jail as a terrorist. It seems that Mark saw the 9/11 attacks and tried to warn the government, but of course, no one listened.
The other piece of bad luck for Mark is that he travelled to Afghanistan a couple of years before 9/11 with a Muslim friend to take pictures for a book. When the friend is tortured, he points to Mark as a co-conspirator and the FBI and CIA go after Mark.
Due to his involvement in several incidents like the one with the baby, he drew the attention of a female Chicago PD detective, who at first thinks he’s just a little strange, but later finds him to be sincere and very attractive; they begin dating only a month before his arrest. She didn’t believe him about the camera (who would?) when he tells her about it after being taken into custody. She recoils in horror and disgust, wondering how she could have been so badly fooled.
Mark is taken by the CIA to a Navy brig in SC, where he undergoes the most brutal (and unfortunately legal) forms of torture for over a year while they attempt to force him to reveal who was behind the attacks. This was really the scary part for me because I’m quite sure that this did happen to many innocent US Citizens: suddenly finding themselves trapped by the “Enemy Combatant” status that allows the government to imprision and torture someone with no trial, no contact with the outside world, no way to defend themselves. The author’s description of waterboarding & other inhuman torture methods is chilling and all too believable.
The hero is finally released through the intervention of others (no spoilers here), but not before his life is completely ruined and he finds himself on the streets, having lost everything he’d ever worked for, without as much as a “sorry, dude” from the very people who are supposed to keep innocent citizens safe.
As much as the story revolves around these quasi-legal events, the author manages to treat them with the proper degree of detachment so that it doesn’t come off preachy. This isn’t the work of a conspiracy theorist or paranoid anti-government-crackpot. Most of the bad guys still manage to have a soul.
I found the book to be enthralling and I couldn’t wait to see whether or not this Good Samaritan makes it in the end or not (uh uh…I said no spoilers.) It was a poignant lesson in how easily we can lose everything and everyone we have based on the flimsiest of accusations.
A gripping, well-written read that I enjoyed, despite the fact that I’m pretty firmly anti-romance. The story leans more toward the suspense end of the genre. It’s neither smarmy nor saccharine. I would definitely like to read more from this author.
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