The Books of J.D. Trafford
Merchants Bridge
An attorney searches for answers after he witnesses his colleague’s murder and soon realizes that he’s being framed for something much bigger.
Everything changes for Graydon "Gray" Wendt while walking back to the office after a late dinner with a potential client. An SUV swerves and jumps the curb in front of them. His law partner is killed immediately, and Gray is knocked to the ground and shot twice in the chest.
A few days later, Gray wakes up in the hospital. His face is swollen. His body is sore, and his mind is scattered. Some of his clearest memories from that night are dismissed as by-products of a concussion. Although healing, Gray’s attempt to return to work is complicated by headaches and hallucinations. He struggles with paranoia and how to differentiate what is real and what is not. Law enforcement, in the meantime, focus their attention on Gray, and he must figure out what really happened and who is setting him up to take the blame.
Little Boy Lost
An Amazon Charts bestseller.
A broken city, a missing young man, and a lawyer searching for truth when nobody else cares.
Attorney Justin Glass’s practice, housed in a shabby office on the north side of Saint Louis, 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.
Justin had hoped to find the boy alive and well. But all that was found of Devon Walker was his brutally murdered body—and the bodies of twelve other African American teenagers, all discarded like trash in a mass grave. Each had been reported missing. And none had been investigated.
As simmering racial tensions explode into violence, Justin finds himself caught in the tide. And as he gives voice to the discontent plaguing the city’s forgotten and ignored, he vows to search for the killer who preys upon them.
Good Intentions
The path to justice is paved with good intentions.
Judge Jim Thompson’s world is unraveling. He’s facing public backlash on a decision-gone-wrong for a young boy in foster care and, even worse, he’s just discovered that his mentor, Judge Meyer, has been murdered.
Despite his self-doubt in the face of media scrutiny, Jim is determined to continue his friend’s legacy—and find his killer. As he digs into the mysterious death, Jim comes across a case that had haunted the judge for decades—a case he couldn’t let go of. Judge Meyer had worked hard to find the right solutions for foster children, but rulings in such cases are never simple, and his decisions may have cost him his life.
As Jim searches for answers, he begins to see similarities between his mentor’s past and his own present. Now it’s up to him to learn from his late friend’s mistakes and track down a killer—before he loses everything that matters to him.
Without Precedent
Matthew Daley is a Manhattan corporate lawyer at the top of his game. As the first defense attorney on call to get pharmaceutical companies out of trouble, Matt is rising in the judicial system exactly as he planned. Until his sister dies of a heroin overdose.
Now, torn between conscience and career, the newly minted law partner faces a critical choice: defend the very companies that manufactured the addictive drugs, or give up his fiancée and his hard-won dream job to fight for justice in his sister’s name.
Returning to his blue-collar hometown with a ragtag band of law-school misfits by his side, Matt squares off against a team of New York corporate attorneys in a high-stakes courtroom battle. If he wins, the case could have national implications, bringing down the multibillion-dollar Big Pharma industry. If he loses, he’ll become collateral damage in the greatest fall of his career and his life.
No Time To Run
To save the woman you love, would you risk getting caught after committing the perfect crime?
Michael Collins burned his suits and ties in a beautiful back-alley bonfire before leaving big law in New York and taking up residence at Hut No. 7 in a run-down Mexican resort. He may have dropped-out, but there are hundreds of millions of dollars missing from a client's bank account and a lot of people waiting for Collins to return and answer questions about his sudden disappearance. An FBI agent is convinced that Collins was responsible for the death of his partner. A thug who talks like he graduated from Harvard wants Collins' to return the stolen money to a mafia boss, and the U.S. Attorney for New York wants a white-collar trophy to boost her potential run for the United States Senate.
When Michael Collins' girlfriend, Andie Larone, is accused of a murder that she didn't commit, his only choice is to go back. He knows that she is likely only in trouble because of him, and only he can help Andie prove her innocence. With the help of a pot-smoking mathematician named Kermit Guillardo, Collins must face down hostile judges, evade law enforcement, find the evidence that proves Andie's innocence, and figure out why a low-level government bureaucrat wants so desperately to revoke his license to practice law.
"No Time To Run" is the winner of the National Legal Fiction Writing Competition for Lawyers, topped bestseller lists, and been downloaded over 100,000 times. This is the Tenth Anniversary Edition, revised and updated with a special Author's Note. It is the first book in the series.
Get your copy of "No Time To Run" today!
No Time To Die
What happens when a wayward lawyer makes a promise to a boy that he cannot keep?
Things are not going well for Michael Collins. After narrowly escaping arrest for stealing millions of dollars from a former client, life back at Hut No. 7 in Mexico is hardly a vacation. The love of his life just dumped him and FBI Agent Frank Vatch is still on his trail. When a local boy’s father disappears, Collins makes a drunken vow to bring the missing man home. It’s a promise he doesn’t exactly remember, but it is a promise he intends to keep.
Collins and his pot-smoking, mathematician friend, Kermit Guillardo, fly to a small town in rural Florida where Tommy Estrada had worked the fields with other immigrants without proper authorization. The locals are not friendly to outsiders, and the cops are even more hostile. They make no effort to hide their desire to get rid of Collins and anybody else who dares to poke around the large agricultural companies who own the politicians and run the county.
He teams up with a beautiful and feisty attorney who was already organizing the laborers to protect their rights. They eventually get answers, and Collins decides to seek accountability the only way he knows how: in court. With a novel legal theory and facing an army of silk-stocking lawyers with unlimited resources, his odds of success are slim. This time, however, Michael Collins is not going to run away from the fight.
No Time To Hide
What happens when you’re tired of running away but not quite willing to accept the consequences?
For years, Michael Collins evaded FBI Agent Frank Vatch and avoided prosecution for allegedly taking millions of dollars in client funds. He had quit the practice of law, burned his suits and ties in a glorious back-alley bonfire, and dropped out. He loved his life as a beach bum in Mexico, but the investigation was never closed. Always looking over his shoulder, he wasn’t truly free.
Devastated by the sudden passing of Father Stiles, a man who had raised him after his mother died of cancer and supported him unconditionally in the years since, Collins returns to New York to attend the priest’s funeral. He’s fully aware that he may be placed under arrest, but there are others who also want revenge. He fears for his life and the lives of his friends. As the prosecutors close in, the only question is whether Michael Collins has one more trick up his sleeve or whether it's all over. He will need to leverage all his courtroom skills to get what he wants: a jury to unanimously find him “Not Guilty.”