Lifetime Employment

Kemske blends black humor with a serious treatment of the individual's plight within a closed, Kafkaesque society in his satiric first novel, which freely and expertly borrows the techniques found in mysteries and thrillers. The culture here is a corporate one, Growth Services Inc. (what services it provides no one knows), which guarantees lifetime employment. But one can gain promotion only by murdering one's supervisor. Lacking the ill will to move up in the company's hierarchy, protagonist Gene stagnates in a dead-end job as an assistant human resources manager. When a top-level coup installs Cynthia Price as the new CEO, Gene's nonthreatening attitude suddenly makes him prime executive material. Her admonition ``Just go where you're told to go and do what you're told to do'' becomes his motto, and he looks upon her as his mentor--even though he eventually gets involved in a counter-takeover. Kemske's literary allusions and examinations of corporate philosophy are a treat, but he writes himself into a corner: the novel's end is at best unsatisfactory, at worst cynical. (Sept.)