Linda Kistler

Extreme Justice Linda Kistler

Publisher Marketing: Professor Abby Prescott's teaching career and life at Reid University in Maine are threatened by a disturbed student, John Lombardo, who demands a passing grade in her course that he hasn't earned. Multiple threats to "get her" reach a stunning climax in an ugly confrontation in her campus office when she refuses to change the grade, invoking a vicious outburst by the irate student. Lombardo's father, chairman of the university's board of trustees and a major financial benefactor, influences university president Roger Smythe to override Abby's grade assignment. At stake is a $90 million endowment gift to the university by the Lombardo Foundation. Supported by colleague Jen Carpenter and Pete Byrnes, a campus detective assigned to protect her, she defies president Smythe's directive to change the grade and pass the student. Byrnes, by now Abby's lover and protector, is investigating drug problems on campus and has documented Lombardo's drug history and extensive police record. The evidence is put aside by the president, whose objective is to land the largest gift in the university's history. Abby and Pete return from a climbing vacation in Colorado to discover that her beautiful oceanside home has been trashed in a vicious home invasion in which Lombardo is the prime suspect. Abby's home becomes the scene of a final violent confrontation when Lombardo, high on meth, invades the house and carries out his threat to harm his professor and her lover. "Extreme Justice" and its diverse cast of characters takes the reader deep into the realities of contemporary academic life, exposing drug problems on campus, academic integrity issues, and the compromises top administrators face in today's intensely competitive academic world.