‘Pushed From the Wings : An Entertainment’ is the black comedy that introduced readers to Grafton Everest. Grafton is ten years sober, which is all for the good, but he’s overweight, indolent, indecisive and gets on badly with most of his fellow academics at tinpot Bowen University. Given his druthers, he’d spend most of his time in bed.
If things seem bad, they only get worse when Grafton discovers that his old high school teacher recruits graduates for National Security work. And with the Free Enterprise World Symposium coming to Bowen he needs Grafton, who suddenly finds himself up to his neck in clandestine operations involving everyone from the Premier down. There’s missing nuclear waste somewhere and Bowen campus is awash with radical splinter groups and terrorist cells, all seemingly hell-bent on apocalyptic action. They’re nutty enough to give political correctness a bad name.
‘Pushed From the Wings’ is an angry, profane, laugh-out-loud funny book.

Ross Fitzgerald is Emeritus Professor of History and Politics at Griffith University and is the author of 36 books. Grafton Everest published nothing but went on to become Professor of LifeSkills and Hospitality at the University of Mangoland and, later, state Premier.

Carl Harrison Ford, February 2014