No Easy Money “You never win playing by the rules.”Entrepreneurs face challenges every day from inside the business and from the world around them. It’s hard to be a hero. This is the story of an entrepreneur who wants to win and not play too far outside the rules. Dale Hunter is a young entrepreneur in Montreal running a successful business in the 1980’s world of personal computers. He’s having … computers. He’s having fun and making money until the bad guys arrive. Now he has to try to survive without playing by gangster rules. It will require courage and creativity and the support of some new friends.
While fighting off the criminals, he still has to manage challenges from his employees and customers, the bank and his partners and his two suppliers in Korea and Taiwan. He has to make deals with them all to stay alive.
It starts with a demand for protection money and threats of violence to his family. Hunter agrees to make payments to a gangster named Jacques Talbot. But the pressure increases as Talbot squeezes him for more. Hunter decides to call the cops. That’s a mistake and the criminals raise their demands and the threats to his family. Hunter makes a deal with Frank the Fixer, a tough young Somalian refugee who now works on both sides of the law in Montreal. He can be more creative than the cops, but his first attempt to take out Talbot makes matters worse. Hunter tries to deal with the gangsters himself and only digs himself in deeper again. Frank and Hunter decide the solution is to raise the stakes with an introduction to the Montreal Mafia who will take care of the other gangsters.
Hunter also appeals to his banker, his partners and his suppliers for help, but he is still not safe from the gangsters. He’s now caught between the first gang of thugs and the Mafia who are at war with them.
Somebody is going to get killed. Dale Hunter may never get back to business as usual.
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This book takes you back to the 1980’s business world when Mobs and Dirty Cops we’re very active in Montreal and in parts of the US.
Dale Hunter is a smart businessman. His company is growing much faster than he expected , so of course the MOB takes notice. It starts out when Jacques comes into his office and says Dale will be paying him $1,000 a week in cash for protection insurance. Dale is not happy, but he doesn’t know what else to do. After a few weeks Jacques coms back and says it will be $2,000 in cash each week now for the protection insurance. Then a few more weeks and this time when Jacques comes back it has gone up to $3,000 a week in protection insurance and all along he has told him not to contact the cops, he has some friends who know them. Now he has to get involved with a loan shark to keep up with the Monet Jacques wants weekly. So now there’s extortion, coercion and back room deals that make this book very exciting.
Mobsters, dirty cops and even dirtier businessmen take you on a roller coaster ride where you better hang on to your seat to stay alive. All of this makes for an exciting read. Anyone who likes old Mobsters and how they tried to run everything will love this book.
I won the kindle e-book version of this book in a Goodreads Giveaway. This is the first book in the series and the only book that I have read by this author.
The book takes us to Montreal in the 1980s when non-mainframe computers where starting to take off in both businesses and homes. Dale Hunter is an entrepreneur focusing on monitors. He has major suppliers in South Korea and in Taiwan and has been in business for a couple of years. He also has a wife and two children.
Suddenly, his life is turned upside down. His problems start with a demand for protection money and spirals out from that. The plot covers a wide variety of topics including cultural differences between Korea, Taiwan, Toronto and Montreal,the mafia, threats of violence, police on the take, unscrupulous competitors, computer pricing, service and warranty, credit terms with overseas suppliers, lines of credit, backroom deals and so much more.
With a business background, I was very grateful that I had only encountered the normal business problems of pricing, supplier credit terms, service and warranty repairs etc. and did not encounter the criminal aspects that Dale had to deal with.
This was a great first book in a series. It is well-written and fast-paced. It is original in that it combined so many of the nightmares that an entrepreneur might think about into one story line. I kept pulling for Dale to find a “get out of trouble” or a “free pass” card. It was not a comfortable read, but it was a page-turner. The ending does leave some avenues for future books.
There are a few editing errors in the digital edition that I read. However, overall this was an fast-paced, thought-provoking read and I look forward to reading more books in this series in the future.