Killer With Three Heads by J. L. Hill - Quite a Book!

He had started out in gangs and went on from there... when he defeated a gang, he would pull all that lived from that group, under his domain... His gangs were now here, there, and everywhere... By the same, I picked Eddie Murphy to play MOJO...he seem to fit for me...LOL

At the same time, he got friendly with a Mafia leader and they became close... MOJO had a special charisma with intelligence, drive, and a psychopathic personality, you might say... Although other Mafia leaders weren't necessarily pleased with a close tie to a gang leader...

His latest endeavors were with the blessings of the United State government--he had become a mercenary--hired to get rid of undesirables as defined by a special group who is responding to two corrupt congressmen...

Killer With Three Heads:
Killer Series Book 2

By J. L. Hill

This is one of the most frustratingly intriguing books I have ever read... First, it contains explicit violent and sex scenes that were well beyond what I would normally endure... I almost quit at a certain point, which happened to be a new part...and got more involved with the actual storyline... Finally, I came to think of it as a "man's book" a thriller that is almost a "James Bond" type, except... that MOJO is a criminal...

While MOJO is the central character throughout the novel, it is divided into chapters under a heading: Head of the Family, Head of the Business, and Head of the Government. 

And somebody under one of those heads has kidnapped MOJO's daughter!

"Bout time you got here. I was getting tired of sitting around this rat's nest waiting for you."
Sam is shocked back to sobriety by the voice in the dark. He thinks about going for the gun between the mattress and the headboard but waits to see if the voice belongs to who he thinks it does. "Morris Johnson?"
"Morris Johnson?" inquires the invisible voice. "That guy died years ago. You need to keep up with the times. I'm John Morrison. I am here because someone kidnapped a little girl and you are going to find them."
"First off, get that f...ing light out of my face." snarls Sam. He gives second thoughts to the gun. "And second, that is the worst alias I have ever heard."
I click off the flashlight and the room returns to the gloom of a broken life. In a moment, our eyes adjust to the streetlamp illumination. I'm leaning against the wall with the flashlight tucked in my belt. He has risen to his feet in a boxer stance. I laugh, he is well into his sixties and although he is tall and still muscular, a well-placed kick will break him in two. "I get that a lot these days. But you'd be surprised how many people don't question the obvious. Like those guys following you around all night."
"If you want me to help you find your daughter," Sam stammers, "You should have thought about that before you kidnapped my agents and got me kicked off the case."
"You're not listening. I said you are going to find the people who kidnapped my daughter. I'll find Maria, you can bet on that. And I didn't get you kicked off the case," I correct him. "They will never let you investigate the real crime. So I freed you, now you can go after them."
"I'm not doing anything until you release my agents."
"This... This is not a negotiation," I tell him with venom in my words. His eyes widen and he stiffens as I approach. "Your agent kidnapped my daughter. I kidnapped your agents. You get them back when you deliver him."
"Are you crazy?" Sam protests. "The FBI doesn't kidnap little girls."

~~~

Morris "MOJO" Johnson, AKA, John Morrison is a main character that gains sympathy by readers, as he discovers his daughter has been kidnapped... Only to murder people in every which way you can think of, including "skinning..." 

What he lacks in moral character is balanced out by the most exciting thriller scenes that I've seen for awhile. This includes all those gadgets and super-hero stunts that a James Bond will do...and then he takes it a step further and creates a new weapon that everybody wants, and especially the U.S. Government group with which he has acted as a mercenary...

The action makes you think that MOJO is actually the one with the three heads as he moves from place to place creating havoc...and sometimes personal relationships... One of those deals he worked out was for him to take the honeymoon with a former lover of his, just after she married another man...Wow! And then there are all of his other women who work along with him...as well as his wife... Does he love any of them? Can a serial killer love? Certainly he does his daughter! 

And, the whole story wraps up into a unique, quite extraordinary novel that caught my attention, despite the explicit violence and sex, and held me through to the end--not a surprising one, because by then you know what will be happening... But, dare I say, a very satisfying one, as he eliminated the bad guys, while holding on to his longer-term connections...still alive!

What's the best way for a psychopath to help society? Well, J. L. Hill's MOJO seems to be that vigilante that makes it happen in a thrilling, fast-paced story! It's a great book but only if you accept the explicit sex and violence... I keep my personal negative opinions out of my overall review... So... Check it out! You Decide!

GABixlerReviews

A native New Yorker, born and raised in the Bronx, I spent my adolescence years in Fort Apache, the South Bronx 41st precinct during the 60’s. Raised on blues, soul, and rock and roll gave me the heart of a flower child. Educated by the turmoil of Vietnam, Civil Rights, and the
Sexual Revolution turned me into a gladiator. Realizing the precariousness of life gave me an adventurous outlook to try anything once, and if it did not kill me, maybe twice.
12 years of Catholic education and a couple of years in college spread between wild drug induce euphoric years, which did not kill me, gave me an unique moral compass that swings in any direction it wants. A scientific mind and a spirit that nothing is impossible if you want it bad enough guides my writings. I enjoy traveling to new places and seeing what life has to offer.
I began writing short stories and poetry back in my early years. In my twenties I moved on to novels, but I fell out of love with the whole publishing industry. I worked in the financial industry as a processing clerk and later got a degree in computer programming, my other love. I have a successful career as a software engineer designing, developing and maintaining systems for the government and the private sector. I been programming for nearly forty years in various languages.
With the advantages provided by the expanding and growing self publishing business (print on demand over vanity publishing) and the explosion of social media/internet as a viable means of advertising I have returned to my first love, unleashing the characters in my head. Actually I never stopped writing, now that the kids are grown and my wife realizes that I have little other interest outside the bedroom, and I’m still a hopeless insomniac, I am free to pound out plots. Killer With A Heart is the first in a series for Bulletproof Morris ‘Mojo’ Johnson.
I enjoy writing crime stories and science fiction, with a slant on the dark side of life. Pegasus: A Journey To New Eden answers the question my wife asked me some years ago, “How do I feel about nuclear war?” I told her I was all for it as long as we find someplace else to live. My science fiction deals with the emotional effects of technology. Thirty years ago when a single computer filled an entire room and I was writing games on a monochrome screen I knew two things were certain. Computer games would be big and computers for all the good they can do would put a lot of people out of work.
Married with six kids, eleven grandchildren keeps me on the go.

Dr. Theodore G. Pavlopoulos Posits: Is the U.S. Office of Personnel Management Responsible for 9/11?

Introduction: On September 10, 2001, then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld used the phrase "a matter of life and death" in a speech to Pentagon personnel, titled "War on Bureaucracy." He stated that the Pentagon's bureaucracy was dysfunctional. The next day, one airplane crashed into the Pentagon, and two airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center. It was the most devastating terrorist attack in United States history. It has been said that old generals just fade away, but that great nations commit suicide. With a fysfunctional federal bureaucracy that has left us ill-equipped to deal with natural disasters, energy shortages, and war, I believe America is committing suicide.
September 11 was a wake-up call for Americans in many far-reading areas, including security, diplomacy, and immigration. The terrorist attacks should also have been a wake-up call for our poorly functioning federal civil service. Unfortunately, this did not happen. Performance problems at the FBI, the CIA, and other federal departments and agencies have been reported. Unfortunately, no one seems to have a workable solution to these problems. The President, Congress, and the American people seem to have no idea that those sections of the federal civil service system are steadily descending into a very serious human resources crisis. Americans have found many good solutions for their political, social, technical, scientific, and medical dilemmas, but their federal civil service system is still a mess...

~~~

Is the U.S. Office of Personnel Management Responsible for 9/11?

The American Bureaucracy: A Veteran's Eye-Opening Memoirs

By Dr. Theodore G. Pavlopoulos

Stop! Don't think because you do not work in the federal government system that this book does not concern you! It does! Let me be more specific, I worked at a state university and I can support, from my own experiences, that this author is providing factual information. I may disagree with his basic premise, though, that the U.S. Office of Personnel is responsible. Only because I believe it is much more wide-spread than one office or one system. America has lost its edge in dealing with the human resource... I consider it epidemic...

Dr. Pavlopoulos has used his own life story, his memoirs, to begin his narrative. I will admit that I was hesitant to read the book, even though the author had checked out my own experience and felt I would understand the book. That is, I started in an Office of Personnel and moved upward into upper administration of a government supported, land grant university. The reason why I hesitated was, you see, I had a feeling that the author would be attacking the same issues that I had... I was right...

In beginning his book, Dr. Pavlopoulos presents his educational and professional credentials. He had received sufficient recognition from his professional peers that this reader quickly knew that this man had been treated unfairly by the institution(s) in which he worked. Although his personal story is paramount to the book and understanding his conclusions, I'm not going to spend much time other than to support that my own nearly 40 years within a state institution are too similar and too relevant to his arguments not to validate this book. More specifically, it is practically impossible for an employee who is willing to speak out about discrimination in any form, will succeed in receiving a satisfactory or even a negotiated response.

 I highly recommend this book to any citizen who wonders how good employees are shunted aside in any organization while others are promoted and are often known to be slackers on the job... 

I am totally shocked by the
way some employees do not
work and the waste of time
that is tolerated. My agency
and supervisor provide very
little feedback on my
performance. It is difficult
to obtain any performance
rating except 'fully
successful.' My supervisor
does not agree with the
policy of giving awards or
recognition, so he doesn't.
When a supervisor is
selected, not only do they
need to be qualified, but
they need to be able to work
with people and understand
people.

The question for me was whether the Office of Personnel Management can be held responsible as opposed to the very leaders of the institution, in this case, the U.S. Government. Yes, it was up to OPM to keep officials informed, but the author or the readers do not know whether that indeed happened, at least on the record.

However, it is clear that most "personnel systems" do not succeed. Why? Because of the supervisors, managers, and administrators who apply it??

What we do know is that employees' attitudes have greatly changed. 

From the 1994 survey on "Working for America," the MSPB obtained information on whether the federal civil service is protected from prohibited practices violating merit-system principles. These are some of the survey responses:

The extreme secrecy with which cash awards are given leads me to believe that inequities exist. An award, cash or otherwise, should be a public honor.

I have to rate employees based on a quota system. I was ordered to lower two ratings to meet quotas. Quality of work was never mentioned as a reason to lower these ratings.

People who have started years after me with even less education are up for GS-9.

Affirmative actions and whistle-blower policies are useless if a first-line supervisor can manipulate the facts in a believable manner and retaliate against an employee!

My supervisor is a master in manipulating the system to suit his needs and the needs of a few favorite employees.

The reality is that going against your supervisor--fair or unfair--kills your career.

I have been in the same job for eighteen years! I have been turned down for five promotions even after making the best-qualified list each time. My agency does not promote people with skills. You must be a good friend of management or be a white male!

The government could use employees much more effectively. Presently, people are being stifled. What people are capable of doing is not considered as important as whether or not they fit into the system.

~~~

What is also known is that "in the early 1990s, it dawned on the

Center's management that the overall performance and productivity had plummeted..." This was based on the inability to resolve position management/classification problems. That is, employees who were performing above their classifications were never brought into line. Basically, what this said to me was that employees who had been assigned additional duties by their supervisors, either had never been submitted for the appropriate upgrade, or that they didn't push to recognize additional work of that employee, not wanting the hassle of working with Personnel... Management experts have noted The Peter Principle which shows that supervisors, and managers are often promoted to their level of incompetence due to poor selection choices made by superiors...

My department was reorganized at one time, with some people moved into another department, while the duties and responsibilities remained with me. In order to accommodate to the loss of people, I changed the job descriptions of my other staff, spreading the work load. I was chastised by Personnel because I had done this. My question was, how else did you expect to be able to respond to loss of staff without a decrease of workload? Included to illustrate confirmation of what this book covers.

Donald Rumsfeld, on Monday, September 10, 2001, addressed The Pentagon personnel... He was asking for War...He led his audience by the hand, talking about an adversary that posed a huge threat to the security of the United States. It might have been one of the most significant speeches that any individual in Washington ever presented! 

Then he honed in on that adversary--it was the bureaucracy of the Pentagon! He quickly pointed to specific issues and went on and on...The author has provided that entire speech in his book and notes that "the Secretary of Defense deserves to be applauded" and I totally agreed... But did anything come out of that speech that occurred just a day before 9-11? Or did it just get pushed aside, with claims that 9-11 had presented "much more important" issues than just internal administration of our government?

The author also has honed in on many more issues, too numerous to include in this review, but did include a section of "Autocratic and Incompetent Management" and then begins to question what was publicly provided on this issue...and then moves directly into his question as to whether the OPM is responsible, mentioning that many shortcomings and disasters were spotlighted after 9-11. I must admit that the author's presentation and lead into this final section warrants considerable thought...and, hopefully, ACTION..

Unfortunately, the career of Dr. Theodore G. Pavlopoulos ended sadly at his retirement...So did mine. By that time, I was in an unclassified job which allows you to just be told there is no longer a job for you. My immediate supervisor at that time did not even have the guts to discuss what was happening with me, and I notified him only then that I had filed for retirement. I hope the author will forgive me for including a small part of my own story and hope he will realize that I did it in support of his book and on his assertion that the government bureaucracy is in crisis...

Whether it is his recommendations that should be followed is not something that I can say. What I do know is that I consider this book a must-read. It is your tax dollars that fund our government activities. You need to read a book like this to begin to understand, if you don't already feel that there is something very wrong with the bureaucratic actions of our government, as well as working environments across America...


GABixlerReviews

Dr. Theodore G. Pavlopoulos is a retired physicist. He was born in Greece and educated in Germany. During World War II, he studied chemistry for two years at the State Academy for Technology in Chemnitz. From 1946 to 1951, he studied physics at the Technical University of Berlin and the University of Göttingen. He obtained a diploma in physics (equiv. MS degree) in 1951 and a doctorate in 1953 from the University of Göttingen. He immigrated to Canada, where he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto and the British Columbia Research Council. In 1956, he continued as a postdoctoral fellow at Tulane University, UCLA, and as a physicist at Convair in San Diego. He worked as a physicist with the Navy in 1965 in San Diego and retired there in 2003. In 1975 he was elected a member of the New York Academy of Sciences.