Saving Primo: Stories by Keith G. Laufenberg

"Saving Primo" is the last of the book's four stories with the primary characters being J.D. Dickens, and his partner, Isaiah 'I-Hop' Hopkins. The story's intrigue involves a top-secret deal between the American and Canadian governments concerning an enormous oil pipeline that is being built through the Canadian Yukon and far into the U.S. and when Primo Canto, whose life had been saved by J.D. and his partner 18 months previously, phones them about his finding information for an environmentalist group that is against the clandestine pipeline deal even more vehemently since they find it also involves Russia when Primo finds proof that it also involves a secret underwater pipeline that will stretch from the tip of Alaska into Russia. Primo, who had fallen in love with the future president of her own new country, and leader of millions of hard-core, rabid and revolutionary environmentalists, had taken the fall when the Canadian and American governments had charged him with espionage, arrested him and was in the process of trying him for treason, for which he could receive the death penalty, when he called J.D. -from his jail cell. This story is set a few years into the future but it is in the news right now, in 2013, as both countries battle their number one enemy-the environmentalists-as well as the public-over the questions of the gas and oil companies, as well as the governments, rights that they claim in the name of National security and if you want to see how this upcoming reality may very well end don't miss "Saving Primo," the last story in this series. "Sandcastles in the Sun," is the first story in this series of stories about Julius 'J.D.' Dickens, a private investigator and former police officer for 19 years, who gets this case when his assistant, a 21-year old first year law student, whose father is a police captain, assures him that it's a simple "open-and-shut" case paid for with department money. Dickens, who has personal reasons for accepting cases paid for by department money, takes it. J.D. meets the owner of the Love-Bug restaurant, the suspect in the 30-year old cold case that he had undertaken and also the suspect in the murder of her husband, a multi-millionaire who had made his money in the car business. She had taken her inheritance and opened the Love Bug Restaurant, a shrine to the pesky insects that mated once every year and wreck havoc on anyone who ventures into Florida during that period. Her own son had actually pleaded with the police for years that his mother was the real killer but then general sentiment was that the son was incensed over his dad's car dealership that had gone belly-up and he wanted to get the money his mother had made from her hugely successful chain of Love Bug restaurants. J.D. had been ready to forget the case when he met the suspect, a Dolly Parton lookalike who made him an offer that he just couldn't seem to turn down. "The Spearhead Case" begins when 'J.D.' Dickens takes a case when a man walks into his office one day without an appointment or phone call. He knows who J.D. is and says he was referred to him by a childhood friend who had been his partner on the local P.D. for over a decade. The case is so quirky and troubling that J.D is just about to turn it down when $20 K in cash as a retainer entices him off just enough to take the case. The Spearhead case leads J.D. and recently retired from the force, Isaiah Hopkins, into a partnership again. The challenge is the Everglades, with its huge alligators, crocodiles and twenty-foot Burmese pythons and a suspect who was born and raised there and is half Seminole Indian and half Gladesman and calls himself Osceola Again in reference to the legendary Everglades Indian Osceola. It's a challenge that both men see as almost impossible and they will need all their local police knowledge and connections to solve. "A Heartbeat Away" is a twisting/turning Las Vegas boxing story that you will never for