About the author
I’ve worked in marketing analytics for over twenty years, both in the corporate world and teaching it to MBA students and writing two textbooks (Marketing Analytics and Advanced Customer Analytics, both from Kogan Page London).
My first novel, Segment of One (an analytic thriller) came out from Wild Rose Press June 2022. Using marketing analytics as a plot device seemed unique, exciting, and very fun.
My second novel, Missing Values (also an analytic thriller) came out from Solstice Publishing January 2024. Note this is about human trafficking and the story is brutal and visceral!
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.
LIZ CHARMING starts a new job as VP of Analytics at Glass Analytic Consulting. SEBASTIAN GLASS wants her to develop improved predictions because the Analytic Engine GAC uses is flawed. The analysis just provided to a criminal client, the leader of an African revolt, had massive forecasting errors.Liz’s new Analytic Engine prototype incorporates simultaneous equations and proves to be far more accurate. Sebastian sells the predictions to both legitimate and less-than-legitimate customers, including international terrorists, Mexican drug cartels and NY mob bosses.Liz discovers that Sebastian used her AE to help optimally target a VX gas attack on manufacturing plants, killing thousands, and then profiting from the manipulated market. So, Liz steals the AE to stop Sebastian from using her work for any other illegal activity.How can she fight an international corporate giant like Sebastian Glass? He has contacts and resources worldwide and will stop at nothing to get the AE back in time to carry out another attack.
Mimi Sanders, former child prodigy in both music and math, suddenly moves out of her mother Helen’s house after catching her fiancé cheating. She takes a new job in Dallas, needing to get away from academic psychometrics and launch a new career in marketing analytics at Renaissance Agency.
On her first day, two things alter her expectations: 1) she is handed a desperate new business pitch to save Renaissance from layoffs and 2) Army Military Intelligence recruits her skills in predicting consumer behavior to aid them in predicting terrorist behavior.
She agrees to help Captain Roger Parker with counter-terrorism, using her corporate job as cover. They start a relationship but she catches him in several lies. His checkered past begins to surface and she wonders if she can trust him.
Helen comes to visit, at the worst possible time, trying to repair their complicated family issues. But now they must all work together incorporating Mimi’s personality algorithms to thwart Blue Death, who will resort to anything, including kidnapping and murder, to carry out a devastating attack.