Congratulations! You have secured a position as a manager…so now what? With your job description folded securely in you pocket, you set out for your first day on the job.
Do you really know what to do when you get there?
As you navigate your journey ahead, this straightforward guide will help you with decision making, identifying key people, and taking effective action.
IF there were a manager’s Hippocratic Oath, it would begin, as this book does, with First Do No Harm.
What Do I Do When I Get There? contains simple formulas for business success that every manager in the real world must learn to master.
The absurdity continued in this series which went off the rails right after the first book. I read this and the fourth book only because I had already bought them, and they were pretty short reads.
Once again, rural Oregon Sheriff Bud Blair is at the center of international terrorism and the target of a major foreign drug cartel, but fortunately he has plenty of help because so many of his friends and somehow the few deputies on his staff are former SEALS/covert ops/etc... types.
There could have been a good story here, and one plausible. The title and cover would make you think the main story involved Mariah, a girl fleeing her abuseive homelife, but that is really treated as an unimportant side-plot; Bud has to deal with the arrival of the young girl from Klamath Falls fleeing her druggie negligent mother's violent drug dealing boyfriend almost as an annoyance. This is a story I cared about and it should have been the main story instead of the James Bond thriller the author gave us.
Mariah leads a sad and broken life. At thirteen she tries to care for her Mom, a woman seriously addicted to meth. At the same time she is trying to avoid any contact with her mother's live-in boyfriend Manfred or Manny as he was usually refered to, the facilitator of her addiction and a violent man. It's midnight, and she can hear disturbing noises of violence, maybe a beating, maybe a murder near the garage. She sees a man almost lifeless being beaten with a two-by-four on the head by Manny when he hears and sees her and threatens her. From this moment, knowing Manny will come after her as witness and with certainty that he will kill her, she starts running for her life. In the meantime, he tries to drag the man's body and load him into the trunk of his car.
Mariah is a wonderful character, she keeps you glued to the book wondering what she is going to be able to do to excape next. She is very resourceful and manages at one point to conceal herself in the loft space in the back of a trailer-pickup combo when the driver is getting gas and though has no idea where this rig will be going, she feels somewhat safe. She also manages to hand a note to the cashier at the gas & shop station to call 911 and have them go to her address with an ambulance and the police. As I said, resourceful. I loved this book with all its toughness. The interludes of the police who are also friends gone fishing was a great touch. These guys know how to get the best out of the worst, with the passion, the caring, the difficulties of living a normal life. The major head of the snake is more like the hydra, with drug cartels being the heads. This book takes place pretty much from Oregon to Mexico, a lot of land to cover and cover it the characters in this book do. From sheriffs to FBI to our runaway girl and finally to the cartel homes in Alamos, Mexico, the race is on, to find and save Mariah, to keep Amanda from being blown up, to save Mariah's mother, to catch Manny and much more. Also, there is a very good warning that many people don't think about on what can happen with an Amber Alert: Leave it to the police! A young girl who thinks she is helping by keeping people informed of Mariah but publicly saying she has been found could too easily have cost Mariah her life.
This story also created a background for seeing some everyday smalltown police at their best. A lot of good planning is involved, but at the same time all of them know it could go belly-up in the twitch of a hair or blink of an eye. The same applies to the FBI, NCIS, whatever other government agencies are there to back up or implement, whichever is needed. Mariah's story is terrifying, a thirteen-year old running for her life and yet she has a beautiful soul. With drug cartels involved in other areas but with a crossover due to Manny as a supplier, the tension throughout is steady, with a few of those fishing breaks and friendship breaks, and even then it's not restful, especially with a bomb in the mix. A trip to Mexico puts a definite crimp in the plans to take on a major drug cartel, one of the busiest doing business in the U.S., when another cartel fouls their plans. This is a book that will grab you, shake you up, and not let go. So much can go wrong and some of it does, but that's what keeps us on our toes in life and in this book it really works. I loved it.