Little boy lost, by J. D Trafford

On the basis of a positive review in the Post-Dispatch, the Friends of the Library invited the author to speak at one of our author nights.  As it turned out, he’d recently moved from St. Louis but was “still in the Midwest” and visited St. Louis on occasion.  So we worked around his schedule and he appeared here in mid-winter.  Trafford, which is a pseudonym, turned out to be a most engaging speaker.  His book is well-written and the St. Louis location and political/racial scene is well done.  When an eight-year-old girl empties her piggy bank and tries to engage lawyer Justin Glass’s services to find her disappeared teen aged brother, he is drawn into a much bigger case than just one missing, probably up-to-no-good young man.  Justin has recently lost his wife and is trying his best to raise his own bi-racial daughter, Sammy.  Although he’s a son of a powerful political African-American family (think the Clays), his law practice and his life have pretty much fallen apart after his wife’s death and he and Sammy are living in the carriage house of his mother and grandfather's home.  It turns out that there are many more than one lost boy – and no one seems too concerned as they are all black teenagers with backgrounds in petty and serious crime.  The J. D. in the author’s name is a  nod to his day job as a juvenile judge, now in Minneapolis.  He knows his stuff and I look forward to more mysteries by this author.  303 pp.