Amazon Dan McNay Books Category:  Action/Thriller Publisher: The Book Folks ISBN-10:  1913516652 Type: Fiction Pages: 198 Copyright: February 2021 ISBN-13: 9781913516659 Price: $2.00 (eBook) The difficulties two close friends have in trying to work for a large University and their love affair ant their tragedies.  A raw and tender novel with a powerful jaw-dropping narrative climax that will stay with you forever. The Los Angeles university campus where Violet works is undergoing restructuring. Her friend Sandy has lost her job and the atmosphere has become toxic. Violet develops a romantic bond with Sandy and begins to form a picture of a happy future, despite all the problems. When Sandy’s son gets involved with a gang, however, a sudden violent event steals the future she hoped for. Her life thrown upside down, Violet now lurches forward on a hazardous path to control her destiny by any means. ALMOST has a slow build-up of screen-gripping intensity leading to a dramatic, unexpected finale.       Excerpt Click, and the wheels would stop against the back of the next marble step. She would lean back and pull the cart up again and then again, click. There were eighteen marble steps between landings, thirty-six between floors. She was trying to get to the third floor of the tower. There was only one elevator, which you could use if you had a key, in the back of the seventy-five-year-old building. If her business was on the up and up, she could have just asked anyone in the building to meet her and take her up. Everyone here knew her. The president’s office was here. The Legal Department. She was over here for meetings and purchasing cool cars for all the University officers. Over here to get documents signed off by the lawyers. Usually she would just take the stairs for the exercise and she would only have a folder with papers in it. Her office was north of here, a half mile away, at the edge of the campus. The building was deserted today. It was early morning for this year’s commencement. The stages and sound equipment were all set up at the far end of the lawn in the mall in front of this building. There were thousands of white plastic folding chairs set up facing away from the building, all set for the proud parents to watch the events of the graduation ceremonies later today. She had known the purchasing wizard that had figured out what to do with the thousands of folding chairs. He was retired now. The impossibility of the process. There was nowhere to store thousands of plastic folding stairs. Every year the University bought them, had them shipped in large trucks and set them up and then the next day they sold them to a Chinese firm as used. And away they went again. And no one had to clean them. Violet couldn’t ask someone with a key to the elevator for the favor of coming to help get upstairs. She wasn’t on the up and up. This was a not-so-little lie. She was pulling up, one step at a time, a brand new two-wheeled golf caddy, loaded with a top of the line golf bag and clubs fitted with head covers. They were all in teal green. If anyone saw her and asked. People that knew her were always curious about whatever she might be working on and who it was for. She would explain that it was a surprise present for Dr. Tress, the president of the University, and she couldn’t really discuss it. And she couldn’t chance meeting him or anyone else on the elevator that would give it away. She had even imagined her story of getting a big strong student worker to carry it up for her. But she really didn’t want that to take place either. No witnesses would be perfect. And there was no one around at all right now. It was six-thirty in the morning. And in the center of the clubs was her M1 rifle with the sniper scope and the leather cheek rest on its stock with a head cover on the top of its barrel end. Her father’s old club cozy underneath the teal green one. Violet was small and not really very strong. She was energetic and had walked all over campus during her workdays here. That was quite a lot of days, she had been here for twenty years before she was fired. The tight business skirt and heels never slowed her down. She was just five feet tall, but she was a beauty. A giant smile. Perfect teeth, perfect mocha skin, and a look that would immediately tell you she knew exactly who you were and what you wanted. She claimed to have been the head of the Filipino mafia on the campus and she probably had been. This had been long in the planning and long in keeping it hidden from everyone. She was already tired. Trudging up the steps with it was painful as well because of her arthritic fingers that were beginning to seize up again. She pretended it didn’t hurt. You could keep on long after everyone else if you knew how to pretend it didn’t hurt. She would rest on the first-floor landing. Click, and the wheels would stop against the back of the next marble step.

A Great Book
Ira Five Stars rated it it was amazing
Working in a university comes sugar-coated with imageries of benevolence and paternalism, all benefits included, and equality and diversity are presented as the passcode for making it a success. An ethos of care and looking after one another pursuing the good of knowledge science objectivity and justice permeates every pore of the beautiful architecture of these high-standing institutions. Except universities are anything but the image they project.

Nepotism, the barely-concealed incompetence of bullies, nasty personal vendettas, racism, and a pernicious middle-class superiority complex mixed with their fear of being exposed as the fraud they are creates toxic environments for those who come from outside and will be only tolerated as outsiders, and for that they must also bow and kneel and never dare asking for their fair share of anything.

Hard To Put Down
Terrific Story

An enjoyable read
A really enjoyable read and the surprise ending caught me off guard. The characters were believable and McNay’s writing brought them to life. Looking forward to more of this author’s books.