Crime Fiction MISSING VALUES with Michael Grigsby

Patrick Grey, a single father and marketing analyst, is the only Black guy on the company directory.

When his teenage son, PJ, is abducted, police dismiss it as a gang-and-drug related hit. But Patrick knows better.

The only one who believes him is FBI Agent LaWanda Thompson. The crime bears a striking resemblance to one that destroyed her family, one involving human trafficking.

Using typical forensic methods, the police have not uncovered any leads.

But by using marketing science, Patrick comes up with more insightful intelligence which he must now use to predict where PJ was taken, before it’s too late and his son is sold on the open market.

Michael Grigsby

Michael Grigsby recently sat down with The Big Thrill to discuss his latest crime fiction, MISSING VALUES.

When you first created your protagonist for this book, did you see an empty space in crime lit that you wanted to fill? What can you share about the inspiration for that character?

Patrick Grey was designed as a fish-out-of-water protagonist, a corporate guy in way over his head when thrown in the midst of a brutal blood thirsty criminal organization. He was smart and driven to find and save his son, but he had never been up against the kind of immorality he was facing.

A novel is such a major undertaking; there’s the writing of it, of course, then you’re spending months and months revising, polishing, and then promoting it. How did you know this was the book you wanted to spend the next couple of years on?

I knew it was worth spending time on, because I could not put it down, I could not stop tinkering with it, I could not ignore it. I was impatient waiting for every beta reader to send it back to me so I could work on it some more.
Plus, it scared me a little, the idea of human trafficking and how anyone’s children could just be kidnapped away and sold on the open market.

In addition to a great read, what do you hope readers will take away from this story?

Awareness of human trafficking and how it operates.

What can you share about what you’re working on next?

Another analytic thriller, called Forecasting Error.