Making a Difference

by Michael Beck

The novel is set in a fictional northern town and tells how Greg Preston, Mister Average in his mid-thirties with a wife and two children becomes radicalised, not by a Jihadist or religious group but by an extreme left wing anti-capitalist movement.
It starts with the funeral of Greg’s younger brother Allan who committed suicide in prison having been convicted of possession of a firearm that he was moving on behalf of the Movement. Allan had quit university in London, disillusioned by the inequality of life and had lost touch with his family who only discovered he was back in the area when he was arrested in a nearby town.
The funeral is the starting point for Greg’s desire to find answers as to why his brother took the decisions he did and what ultimately drove him to suicide.
Greg had already been identified as a potential recruit by the Movement and when they become aware of his quest they approach him and offer to give him some of his answers. He agrees and this is the start of a process of subtle manipulation by members of the movement who play on his feelings for his dead brother and, combined with other events, steadily draw him towards them.
Greg has to conceal his covert meetings with the members of the movement from his wife and this creates major problems between them until eventually he begins to reveal what he has been doing although he never tells her everything. The novel ends in a dramatic climax with a number of twists concerning various characters.

222 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 12, 2016

About the author

There is more than one author with this name in the Goodreads database.

Beck is known predominantly for his roles as Swan in the action film The Warriors (1979), Sonny Malone in Xanadu (1980), Lieutenant Commander Dallas in Megaforce (1982), and Koda in Triumphs of a Man Called Horse (1983). Both the Xanadu and Megaforce roles garnered him Razzie nominations, for Worst Actor and Worst Supporting Actor, respectively.[citation needed] Beck has appeared in other movies such as Warlords of the 21st Century (1982), Wes Craven's Chiller (1985), Gone to Texas (1986, as James Bowie) and Forest Warrior (1996).[citation needed] He also read for, but did not get, the role of Lancelot in John Boorman's film Excalibur.

Beck appeared as Hans Helms in the 1978 TV miniseries Holocaust, and starred in a short-lived television series, Houston Knights (1987). More recently, he appeared in such television shows as JAG, Walker, Texas Ranger, In the Heat of the Night, as the Mars-born terrorist-turned-cyborg assassin Abel Horn in Babylon 5 (episode "Spider in the Web"), and as Mr. Jones in the spinoff series Crusade.

Beck has narrated numerous audiobooks of John Grisham's novels. He has also narrated Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz; A Darkness More Than Light by Michael Connelly; State of the Union by David Callahan; and the unabridged version of Bill Clinton's My Life. He also reprised his role as Swan in 2005, lending his voice to the popular video game adaptation of The Warriors.