Are Thrillers Supposed to Be this Depressing? and This Predictable?

No Good Deed - M. P. McDonald

Thriller novels? Let’s see: the hero is supposed to undergo trials and tribulations and nevertheless triumph. Isn’t that about the size of it? Well, if all you want is a plot in which a hero undergoes trials and tribulations and nevertheless triumphs, then feel free to pick up a copy of M. P. McDonald’s No Good Deed. If, on the other hand, you want something well-written; I advise you to look elsewhere: this is the sort of novel on which self-publication has built a regrettably shoddy reputation.

Mark Taylor’s a Chicago-based photographer, and a damned good one. Not only does he do kiddie portraits and weddings, he also does arty stuff. That’s how he got in trouble: while taking photos in Afghanistan for a buddy’s book on the plight of Afghan women he found an old camera in a bazaar. Little did he know the camera had special powers: the first time he developed photos taken with the camera (yeah, film), some shots he hadn’t taken appeared: photos of airplanes crashing into twin towers. 

As he frantically called agencies with initials, he inadvertently created a paper trail back to himself. Later, he would come to regret that trail – later, when he was arrested and tossed in a dungeon somewhere as “an enemy combatant.” Tortured… err, “interrogated enhancedly” to learn his putative connection with the 911 terrorists, Mark remains steadfast in his denials. After all, he has nothing to confess to except owning a magic camera, and if the FBI, HLS, ATF, CIA, AT&T and whatever 3-letter acronyms he encounters don't believe in magic cameras, it’s their fault, right?

Through a somewhat magical coincidence, months later Mark is suddenly released – back to the Windy City and ultimately into the arms (and, of course, bed) of the Chicago PD cop he’d begun dating weeks before his arrest. And then he begins taking pictures with that camera again…

What starts out as a reasonably interesting premise – a magical camera right out of “Warehouse 13” – bogs down quickly. We start with a camera that predicts the future, making dire photos that magically change to happy-happy once Taylor halts the impending disaster. And then he gets busted for his troubles. Rather than moving beyond Taylor’s incarceration, McDonald slathers on the torture and humiliation for maybe 150 pages, with only brief breaks to visit the beauteous Jessie Bishop on the outside. And then, of course, there are the coinky-dinks galore – Jessie goes past Mark’s house at exactly the right moment to rescue his photography equipment from where it sits on the street after his eviction (come on, now – would a landlord really dump photography equipment on the curb? Hell no – he’d take it home and sell it on eBay!). And the ridiculous unlikelihood of Taylor’s torturer-in-chief ending up a few blocks from his workplace (CIA seconded to FBI? I doubt it…) It's a plain old waste of a fairly good idea.

Most of all, though, the book suffers from bad writing. The dialogue between characters is stilted, the expository writing is stodgy and the plotting is as predictable as a fourth-grader’s poetry. Overall, it’s just plain bad – and perhaps the only thing worse is that the author has already pounded out another four or five of them. 

If you like your thrillers depressing, predictable and overly depended on coincidences, feel free to snap up a copy of No Good Deed while the getting is good. Me, I’m not that interested… Oh, and will someone please tell M. P. that the baseball team on Chicago's north side is the Cubs, not the “Cub’s”? Thanks…