The Opportunity is a suspenseful crime novel set in the high-powered competitive environment of Washington DC and the high-paced professional networking social life of Rehoboth Beach, Delaware in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. The novel portrays corruption in the Federal Government contracting industry, and includes the relationship between a Federal agency, its contractors and members of Congress. The highly plausible plot showcases Amy Ericson's successful career transition. Amy goes from earning a paltry salary as a divorced third grade teacher to making megabucks as a marketing executive who wins lucrative government contracts. The novel opens on July 4, 2011 on a hot summer Saturday in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Amy's boss, Pete Taylor collapses on Rehoboth Avenue after eating and drinking to excess while attending a formal party. The remainder of the novel traces the events leading to Amy's rise in marketing and Pete's reaction to discovery and report in a Washington, DC newspaper of the political corruption he and Amy perpetrated so their company, Computer Information Networks, Inc. (CIN Inc.) would win a billion dollar information technology contract. The corruption involves exchange of confidential information for sex between the Contracting Officer and the contractor's marketing representative. The Contracting Officer's former girlfriend exposes the corruption to a newspaper reporter, who publishes a series of articles that initiate an investigation by the Federal agency and the FBI, which results in the death of the Contracting Officer and one of the contractors. The last chapter resolves Pete's fate.
About the Author: Frank E Hopkins was born in Boston, MA, and contracted the lifetime malady of being a Red Sox fan. 2013 was a great year, but 2014 will be soon forgotten. Frank E Hopkins lived in Queens and Long Island, New York while attending Hofstra University in the 1960s, the location and time period of Unplanned Choices. He became involved in writing while earning his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Maryland. He held the tenured position of Associate Professor at the State University of New York at Binghamton in the 1970s, where he published numerous referred journal articles and a monograph on industrial location. He continued technical writing while working at the Department of Energy in the late 1970s and as a government and business development consultant since 1980. He moved to Ocean View DE in 2001 where as a consultant he managed or participated in writing proposals in response to Federal Government solicitations, the background for The Opportunity. Frank is active in the Rehoboth Beach Writers Guild, where he takes writing courses, and the Eastern Shore Writers Association, where he participates in its Salisbury Writers Critique Group. He is a member of the Maryland Writers Association and the Delaware Writers Network. In addition to writing he plays golf and tennis, sails on the Chesapeake Bay, skis, travels and enjoys the ocean and inland bays of southern Delaware.