Michelle Stevens, Mickie to her friends, is a medically retired detective. She works at the National Rag, still bringing mystery to the civilians. She is working on a story of a possible gang of human traffickers to explain the disappearances of college coeds and pretty streetwalkers. It's also the quest of a Private Investigator that knows of twelve such cases, and presumes even more from adjacent counties. Fly in the ointment? The PI is murdered. She handed over some notes that Mickie would study. We meet a lot of people and two-legged wharf rats before the end.

I was born shortly after the Atomic Bomb ended WW2. Learned the three Rs - Reading, writing, and arithmetic - before engineers moved from slide rules to computers. Was in high school when we expected the Cuban Missile Crisis to get us all killed and when JFK and MLK, Jr. were assassinated. Graduated University before Saigon became Ho Chi Min City. Held 4 jobs long enough to be counted as careers and a few jobs that were just jobs to keep the refrigerator full. Now taking a run at writing books for a fifth career.