Comma Optional (Paperback)

Samantha "Sam" Rose Johnson is a tough, cynical but law-school educated, Licensed Private Detective. Sam grew up in the rough Sangamon neighborhood of Chicago's south side in the seventies and eighties, and then enlisted in the United States Army Military Police Corps where she served honorably and completed Air Assault Training. Using her military benefits, Sam finished law school, but then, having seen institutional racism and encountered sexual harassment throughout her life and even at the law firms she interned and worked briefly at, Sam decides she can be a better private detective than the ones she has met along the way. Sam is retained by an attorney client to locate a young, errant father whose ex-girlfriend wants him to relinquish his parental rights. The attorney explains to Sam that her client is the daughter of Elgin Police Detective Robert Jordan, with whom Sam has a tenuous working relationship.