Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Little Boy Lost
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WEBSITE: http://www.jdtrafford.com/
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https://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2017/08/qaa-with-j-d-trafford-author-of-little-boy-lost * http://www.thebigthrill.org/2017/07/little-boy-lost-by-j-d-trafford/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
| LC control no.: | no2017111016 |
|---|---|
| LCCN Permalink: | https://lccn.loc.gov/no2017111016 |
| HEADING: | Trafford, J. D. |
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| 040 | __ |a IlMpPL |b eng |e rda |c IlMpPL |
| 100 | 1_ |a Trafford, J. D. |
| 370 | __ |f Washington D.C. |f St. Louis (Mo.) |2 naf |
| 374 | __ |a Novelists |a Lawyers |2 lcsh |
| 670 | __ |a Trafford, J. D. Little boy lost, 2017: |b title page (J. D. Trafford) about the author (J. D. Trafford has topped the Amazon bestseller lists, including reaching #1 on the Legal Thrillers list. IndieReader selected his debut novel, No time to run, as a bestselling pick. He has worked as a civil and criminal prosecutor, as an associate a large national law firm, as a a nonprofit attorney. Prior to law school he worked in Washington D.C. and lived in St. Louis, Miss.) |
PERSONAL
Married; children.
EDUCATION:Graduated from law school.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Nonprofit attorney, law associate, criminal prosecutor, civil prosecutor, and author.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Before debuting as a novelist, J.D. Trafford worked as a lawyer. He has served in the nonprofit sector, as well as prosecuted on both the criminal and civil levels. He has penned several novels, such as No Time to Hide and No Time to Run, all of which are informed by his time spent working as a professional lawyer.
Little Boy Lost is another one of Trafford’s novels. It is informed not only by Trafford’s previous line of work, but also by the racially-charged, sociopolitical issues that swept across the American landscape throughout the 2010s. The novel stars a man by the name of Justin Glass. Justin works as a lawyer in St. Louis, Missouri, yet despite his efforts to help the people within his community, he finds himself unable to tackle his own problems. Justin became a single parent after his wife passed away. He is now trying to wade his way through a mire of grief and depression, but he cannot seem to find a way out. He has been forced to move in with his grandfather, who has also stepped up to offer Justin’s daughter some much-needed guidance as well.
Everything begins to change for Justin when he meets a little girl named Tanisha Walker. Tanisha approaches Justin on her own one day, armed with nothing but a large jar of pocket change and one request: that Justin help her in locating her brother, who vanished some time ago. Justin agrees to take on the case, but his findings soon lead him down the path of a grisly trail of murders being inflicted upon black youths who are down on their luck. Several more cases just like Tanisha and her brother’s begin to fall into Justin’s lap, each one of them pushing Justin into taking further action.
One Publishers Weekly contributor remarked: “Readers will remember Justin long after closing the book.” On CriminalElement.com, Doreen Sheridan wrote: “If you care at all about American politics, our legal system, or race relations, then I can’t recommend this book highly enough.” She added: “Little Boy Lost is a novel as rich and satisfying to the empathetic reader as it is entertaining.” A writer on the Bibliophile Book Club blog expressed that “the author handles every theme quite sensitively.” 20SomethingReads contributor Sarah Rachel Egelman declared: “Little Boy Lost is an exciting and thoughtful read.” She concluded that it “tackles some important and tough issues head on, and with the recent Missouri travel warning issued by the NAACP, it is a timely novel as well.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, June 5, 2017, review of Little Boy Lost, p. 33.
ONLINE
20SomethingReads, https://www.20somethingreads.com/ (August 11, 2017), Sarah Rachel Egelman, review of Little Boy Lost.
Bibliophile Book Club, https://bibliophilebookclub.com/ (July 24, 2017), review of Little Boy Lost.
Big Thrill Online, http://www.thebigthrill.org/ (July 31, 2017), Rick Reed, author interview.
CriminalElement.com, https://www.criminalelement.com/ (July 27, 2017), Doreen Sheridan, review of Little Boy Lost; (August 1, 2017), John Valeri and J.D. Trafford, “Q&A with J. D. Trafford, Author of Little Boy Lost,” author interview.
J.D. Trafford Website, http://www.jdtrafford.com/ (May 3, 2018), author profile.
J.D. Trafford is an award-winning author who has been profiled in Mystery Scene Magazine (a "writer of merit"). His debut novel was selected as an IndieReader bestselling pick, and his books have topped Amazon's bestseller lists, including Amazon's #1 Legal Thriller.
In addition to graduating with honors from a Top 20 law school, J.D. Trafford has worked as a civil and criminal prosecutor, an associate at a large national law firm, and a non-profit attorney for people who could not afford legal representation.
Prior to law school, J.D. Trafford worked in Washington D.C. and lived in Saint Louis, Missouri. He worked on issues of housing, education, and poverty in communities of color.
He now lives with his wife and children in the Midwest, and bikes whenever possible.
J.D. Trafford is an award-winning novelist who has topped numerous Amazon bestseller lists. His debut, No Time to Run, was selected by IndieReader as a bestselling pick. Mr. Trafford graduated with honors from a top-twenty law school and has worked as a civil and criminal prosecutor, an associate at a large national law firm, and a nonprofit attorney; he’s handled issues of housing, education, and poverty in communities of color. His newest novel, Little Boy Lost (available August 1, 2017), is published by Thomas & Mercer.
Recently, Mr. Trafford entertained questions pertaining to standalone vs. series writing, crafting conflicted characters, the importance of setting, and the role of creative license, among other topics.
What was the impetus for writing Little Boy Lost, and why did a standalone appeal to you as opposed to a continuation of your series?
The main character, Justin Glass, predates Michael Collins and the No Time series. I wrote a Justin Glass story about 15 years ago, but the story was never read by anyone. I had the motive and plot all wrong. So I scrapped it but kept Justin in the back of my mind, searching for a story that would fit.
Then, with the recent rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and questions about our justice system, I finally had a context and a world for Justin Glass to come alive. I went back to St. Louis and Ferguson shortly after the Michael Brown shooting. Boards were still on some of the burned-out buildings downtown. The memorial of stacked stuffed animals and messages was still on the curb where he was shot. I decided, then, that this was the story I needed to tell, not necessarily a story about Michael Brown specifically but about the city and its struggles.
Read Doreen Sheridan's review of Little Boy Lost!
Your protagonist, Justin Glass, is conflicted between mind and morals. How does this allow for a juxtaposition of his personal and professional selves, and in what ways do you see his journey as representative of the traditional Everyman archetype?
It’s rare that a person’s personal and professional selves are completely aligned, and interesting characters in books amplify that tension. Lawyers, in particular, have some of the highest rates of depression, chemical addiction, and suicide compared to other professions. A big part of it, I think, is the disconnect between where a person imagined themselves to be on their first day of law school versus where they are as a practicing lawyer (i.e., hustling for clients, trying to get bills paid, paying off student loans, jockeying for status).
Justin Glass is representative of this Everyman archetype, although he comes from a prominent St. Louis family. Over the course of the book, he has to find peace in the compromise and ultimately decide who he is and when he will take a stand.
How do you use the lens of fiction as a means of illuminating everyday realities, and in what ways are the racial tensions that underpin this work evocative of the current world climate?
There are a limited number of people who will pick up a nonfiction book about race, politics, and wealth. And, of those people, most only read nonfiction books that generally confirm the opinions they already have. Perhaps those nonfiction books deepen an individual’s understanding of a topic, but few works of nonfiction actually change somebody’s mind.
Fiction, on the other hand, has the power to reach a much broader and diverse audience. It creates an opportunity to expose readers to different viewpoints and information. Fiction can serve as a foundation for conversation in a way that nonfiction cannot. In the end, however, the primary focus of fiction is to tell a compelling story.
Although issues of race and poverty are present, I worked hard in Little Boy Lost to put the story first. I want readers to care about the characters and, ultimately, draw their own conclusions about the societal issues that the book touches upon.
You’ve lived in St. Louis, which serves as the backdrop for this story. In your opinion, how does setting enhance narrative, and in what ways does knowing a place intimately benefit the development of atmosphere?
I think that location is another character in a story. It needs to be treated with respect, and just like a flesh-and-blood character, the location has a role to play in the story’s development and mood. In the No Time books, the Sunset Resort and Hostel in Mexico represents freedom. In Little Boy Lost, St. Louis mirrors the loss and grieving that is being experienced by Justin Glass. I think that St. Louis is still mourning the loss of industry, the departure of Fortune 500 companies, and the abandonment of its core. Like other Rust Belt cities, it’s searching, still trying to find its way in a world that has changed dramatically since the city’s peak at the 1904 World’s Fair.
I'm assuming that you have a low tolerance for creative license when it comes to taking liberties with legalities in crime fiction. How does this influence the lens through which you view storytelling, both as a writer and reader of the genre?
I am not a purist. I bend things to keep my own stories moving, so I don’t freak out when I read a legal thriller or mystery that does the same. Sadly, practicing law is often not exciting or glamorous. A realistic legal thriller would be hundreds of pages describing a lawyer staring at their computer, typing memos, and figuring out their billable hours. The antagonist in such a story would likely be a printer with low toner or one that constantly jams.
That being said, my background has a big influence on what I write. I enjoy demystifying the “law factory.” The courthouse is one of the few places left in America where people of all classes, races, and education levels collide. It is filled with all kinds of people, and I think they provide an opportunity to learn about our current society and community values and to just be curious about what’s happening in our communities.
Leave us with a teaser: What are you working on now, and what can readers look forward to next?
My next book is not a continuation of Little Boy Lost. Its working title is Good Intentions, and its main character is a struggling young judge assigned to handle child protection cases in Oakland, California. When his mentor is murdered and one of the children on his caseload dies, he must repair his professional reputation and find who is responsible for his mentor’s death.
In J.D. Trafford’s LITTLE BOY LOST, his fourth legal thriller, Attorney Justin Glass’s practice is housed in a shabby office on the north side of Saint Louis. He isn’t doing so well that he can afford to work for free. But when eight-year-old Tanisha Walker offers him a jar full of change to find her missing brother, he doesn’t have the heart to turn her away.
In his search, Glass confronts issues of race, power, and poverty in a city coming apart. As simmering racial tensions explode into violence, Justin finds himself caught in the tide. He gives voice to the discontent plaguing the city’s forgotten and ignored, and vows to search for the killer who preys upon them. LITTLE BOY LOST tells the story of what happens when troubled boys go missing and nobody, including the police, bothers to look.
Award-winning author J.D. Trafford, described as “a writer of merit” by Mystery Scene magazine, has topped numerous Amazon bestseller lists, including reaching #1 in the Legal Thrillers category. IndieReader selected his debut novel, No Time to Run, as a bestselling pick. Trafford graduated with honors from a top-twenty law school, and he has worked as a civil and criminal prosecutor, as an associate at a large national law firm, and as a nonprofit attorney. He’s handled issues of housing, education, and poverty in communities of color. Prior to law school, he worked in Washington, DC, and lived in Saint Louis, Missouri. He now lives with his wife and children in the Midwest, and he bikes whenever possible.
LITTLE BOY LOST received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly, and is now available for pre-order, and due to be released August 1, 2017.
What will readers take away from this book?
My top priority is to always write a good story that keeps readers turning pages. But, I also want to expose readers to different points of view without pushing an agenda. That is what is so great about fiction. I touch upon societal issues in this book, but I let readers draw their own conclusions.
How does LITTLE BOY LOST make a contribution to the genre?
There are many conversations happening about race, police, poverty, and protests. This is one of the first legal thrillers/mysteries set in the midst of these very contemporary issues.
Was there anything you discovered as you wrote LITTLE BOY LOST?
History is cool, and I work hard to provide a real sense of place. So, I enjoyed learning more about the origins of places in Saint Louis that I’ve seen or driven past thousands of times. For example, Bellefontaine Cemetery was founded in 1849 far from downtown Saint Louis, in part, to safely bury all the people who died from cholera.
You have currently written four legal thriller novels, of which LITTLE BOY LOST is the most recent. How difficult, or easy, do you find it to keep coming up with plots, characters, and endings?
I’ve got many ideas, but an idea isn’t enough. What’s challenging is putting the pieces together in a compelling way. The beginning usually comes easy to me, and I know how I want everything to end. The middle is the messy part. I need to make sure everything aligns and makes sense.
There are currently three books in the Michael Collins legal thriller series. Do you plan to continue that series?
The short answer is, I don’t know. I have some ideas about future books with Michael Collins, as well as a spin-off with some of the characters from that world. It is really a matter of scheduling, and thinking about where I am as a writer now as opposed to thirteen years ago when I began working on No Time To Run. Perhaps the working title of the new Michael Collins’ book could be “No Time To Write.”
What authors or books have influenced your career as a writer?
John Sandford’s “Prey” series has influenced me, because he provides a great sense of place to his books. Of course, I am also in debt to John Grisham because he created a market for legal thrillers and legal fiction.
What’s next on the agenda?
Good Intentions is due to be published by Thomas & Mercer in the summer of 2018. It’s a story about a young and arguably unqualified judge whose mentor is murdered just as he comes under public scrutiny for mishandling a child protection case that results in the death of a young boy.
*****
Award-winning author J.D. Trafford, described as “a writer of merit” by Mystery Scene magazine, has topped numerous Amazon bestseller lists, including reaching #1 on the Legal Thrillers list. IndieReader selected his debut novel, No Time to Run, as a bestselling pick. Trafford graduated with honors from a top-twenty law school, and he has worked as a civil and criminal prosecutor, as an associate at a large national law firm, and as a nonprofit attorney. He’s handled issues of housing, education, and poverty in communities of color. Prior to law school, he worked in Washington, DC, and lived in Saint Louis, Missouri. He now lives with his wife and children in the Midwest, and he bikes whenever possible.
Little Boy Lost
Publishers Weekly.
264.23 (June 5, 2017): p33. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* Little Boy Lost
J.D. Trafford. Thomas & Mercer, $15.95 trade paper (340p) ISBN 978-1-50394-394-0
The beaten-down Rust Belt city of St. Louis provides the setting for this tense, powerful thriller from Trafford (the No Time trilogy). Arthur Glass, a member of a prominent African-American family, went from fighting in the civil rights movement of the 1960s to decades of service as a U.S. congressman. Arthur now plans to retire and wants his lawyer son, Justin, to campaign for the seat. But Justin is a mess: mourning the death of his beloved wife, neglecting his nine-year- old daughter, and running a legal practice in a poor part of town. Then eight-year-old Tanisha Walker brings Justin a jar half full of coins to pay for him to find her missing brother. A bunch of youths of unsavory reputation have disappeared, Tanisha's brother among them, and the police have done little to locate the boys. Intensed, Justin embarks on a dangerous quest that changes his life forever as he runs up against entrenched racism, corruption, and political chicanery. Happily, he has the support of a few good people. Readers will remember Justin long after closing the book. (Aug.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Little Boy Lost." Publishers Weekly, 5 June 2017, p. 33. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A495538319/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=5d7d6b83. Accessed 11 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A495538319
1 of 1 3/11/18, 9:10 PM
Little Boy Lost by J. D. Trafford deals with a broken city, a missing young man, and a lawyer searching for truth when nobody else cares (available August 1, 2017).
What a wonderfully timely examination of race relations in America! Justin Glass—the hero of J. D. Trafford’s smart, nuanced and highly entertaining new legal thriller—is a biracial street lawyer who is having a hard time making ends meet despite coming from a family of material means and political connections. His father is a renowned politician, long active in the Civil Rights movement, who’s represented St Louis, Missouri’s congressional district for decades. His mother is the daughter of a respected and now retired judge of decidedly more conservative leanings who is only now loosening up to his mixed-race family. Justin’s brother, Lincoln, has gone into politics as well and expects to succeed their father in Congress.
Justin, on the other hand, is struggling with the depression that crippled him after the death of his beloved wife. He knows he’s lucky to have his extended family help with taking care of his teenage daughter as he slowly pieces his life back together. For now, that consists of taking whichever cases come his way, including the defense against a public intoxication charge that Justin suspects might become more trouble than it’s worth:
The fifth message was from Cecil Bates, one of the public defender cases that I had handled this morning. He wanted me to call him back immediately to discuss his defense strategy. He had been doing research at the public library, and he wanted to share with me several United States Supreme Court cases that he had found.
Warning flags went up all around me.
I wrote down Cecil’s information and considered how quickly I should return his call. If I called him back too soon, he might come to expect that response every time he contacted me. If I waited too long, he’d sour on me. He’d make my life hell until his case was resolved. These were the kind of real-world problems that never get discussed in law school.
This is the kind of small potatoes case that Justin believes he can handle right about now, working solo out of a storefront in a rundown part of town. He just wants to keep his head down and trudge through the low-paying trenches of everyday legal work, doing his job well enough to make the bare minimum to support himself and his daughter.
Fate, however, has other plans in the form of a 10-year-old desperate enough to attempt to hire a lawyer with the money from her grandmother’s swear jar. Tanisha Walker’s beloved older brother, Devon, has gone missing, and no one else seems to care. Justin reluctantly agrees to ask around, resulting in his contact at the police station bringing him the horrifying news: Devon might just be one of the several corpses newly unearthed in the woods, the suspected victims of a serial killer preying on young black men written off by society.
Soon, Justin is representing families desperate to find out whether any of these Lost Boys—as the media has dubbed them—could be their missing sons and brothers. Uncomfortably for Justin, this combined with his famous last name makes him the public face of black anger and grief in St Louis. Even worse, Lincoln is only too happy to make political capital off of this, especially after Justin is brutalized by the police in a case of mistaken identity:
“This is solid.” Lincoln pointed at me. “People need to see what the police did to you, all banged up. Tomorrow you’ll be clean and rested, and that’s no good.” He nodded, agreeing with his own plan. “Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and now you.”
“Hardly.” I raised my hand, anger rising, but I wasn’t sure whether I was angry at Lincoln or the police—or both. “All those guys are gone.” I closed my eyes, trying to focus through the pain. “I’m lucky I wasn’t shot tonight, but…” I faded. My breathing slowed. Every breath hurt. “I’m not doing the politics thing tonight or tomorrow or the next day. What part of that don’t you seem to understand?”
Justin is the perfect Everyman hero for a book as good as this one. Little Boy Lost is a thoughtful look at the American legal and political systems and how they serve, or increasingly fail, the public. Alive with fascinating details of the implementation of the law, it provides an even-handed look at all sides, never offering facile excuses or remedies for the failings of individuals or collectives.
And, above all, it is a fine piece of entertainment! The characters are deeply relatable, and it’s so much fun to see Justin’s team—composed primarily of Bosnian refugees—coalesce around him as he seeks justice and closure for his clients. Of course, this puts him in the crosshairs of a serial killer who has no compunctions about killing one more black man in order to maintain a secret identity.
If you care at all about American politics, our legal system, or race relations, then I can’t recommend this book highly enough. The multiple plot threads are dealt with intelligently and sensitively—I’ve barely skimmed the surface in my review here. Little Boy Lost is a novel as rich and satisfying to the empathetic reader as it is entertaining. I'm hoping it's the first in a series, as Justin, his family, and his friends are people whose exploits I'm eager to spend more time reading about.
I really enjoyed Little Boy Lost. Its short chapters make it very easy to speed through half the book without realising it. I am a fan of legal thrillers, and this one was no exception.
There is so much more going on with Little Boy Lost though. Racism, politics, bullying and murder can be found in this book, and the author handles every theme quite sensitively.
I found that at times the flow of the book felt a bit off, in that there was time skipped and I wondered what was missing, but it didn’t stop me from enjoying the book. Packed with great characters, and with some very current themes, it’s a very good read!
Recommended!
St. Louis attorney Justin Glass has been struggling. Since the loss of his wife to cancer, he has battled depression and loneliness, all the while trying to function as a single dad. Living in the guest quarters behind his grandfather’s house and relying on others for help with his daughter, Justin is far from living up to the promise he showed as a young man of two powerful legal and political families. The arrival of a young girl at his run-down office, eight-year-old Tanisha Walker, asking for help finding her missing teenage brother brings Justin out of his fog of sorrow. Reluctantly at first, and then with a positive energy, he starts an investigation into the whereabouts of Devon Walker.
J. D. Trafford’s latest, LITTLE BOY LOST, is the absorbing story of Justin’s search for justice for a group of murdered young African American men and an account of his own redemption.
Justin, while down on his luck, is quite well connected. The son of an influential civil rights activist turned Missouri congressman, the brother of an ambitious young senator, and the grandson of a well-respected retired judge, at one time he believed that politics was the right path for him as well. Having moved himself away from political intentions, the connections were still intact. Justin calls a detective friend for help finding Devon, and what the two uncover is a mass burial ground of a number of St. Louis’s hardest juvenile offenders, many of whom had gone missing with little investigation from law enforcement or the criminal justice system. They are quickly dubbed the Lost Boys. This gruesome discovery brings to the surface much of the present and historic racial tensions in the city, and Justin finds himself at the center.
As the search for the killer intensifies, Justin learns that his daughter, Sammy, has been facing her own challenges. Still reeling from the death of her mother, she has been severely bullied at school. The bullying culminates with a violent attack, and Justin knows that in the midst of the Lost Boys chaos, Sammy is his priority. To add yet another layer of complication, Justin’s father and brother have all but publically announced his candidacy for Congress, a job Justin is fairly certain he doesn’t really want.
LITTLE BOY LOST is an exciting and thoughtful read. Justin Glass is a study in contrasts, which makes him interesting to read about. Trafford does a good job of making sure his protagonist isn’t wildly heroic. The requisite plot twists are not always surprising, but the author makes them work. He even gives Justin a sidekick of sorts, in a super smart lawyer turned paralegal named Emma, who singlehandedly gets his law practice on track. Trafford’s writing style is brisk and no-nonsense with a dash of introspection and a lot of keen observations (sort of like Justin himself). LITTLE BOY LOST tackles some important and tough issues head on, and with the recent Missouri travel warning issued by the NAACP, it is a timely novel as well.