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Trafficking U

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A chance encounter with a college student victim thrusts bank fraud analyst Jesse Jonsen out of her high tech office into a street-battle against sex traffickers and her own dark past.

Jesse spent her entire adult life atoning for her teenage years as a thief by fighting financial predators as a fraud analyst. Now, after a long week, it’s the Friday before Superbowl LII and Jesse just wants to finish her latte. Let the football crazies own downtown Minneapolis for the weekend.

And then Leilani, trying to escape from her “boyfriend,” barges into Jesse’s life. That chance encounter will plunge Jesse past her limits into war with an international sex trafficking ring.

The sex trafficking industry generates billions of dollars, enslaves millions of people, and thrives by spewing lies across the internet. Jesse has an idea to fight back that just might work. But first, she must survive. And confront her own life choices.

A diverting thriller with thoughtful commentary on a timely issue.

A bank-fraud analyst’s life is upended when she takes on a human trafficking ring in Scott’s topical religious thriller.
The boldest thing about Jesse Jonsen, the principal fraud analyst for Minneapolis-based Uncle Sam Bank, isn’t the fact that she wears jeans in the boardroom, but rather the ingenuity of her pitch to use analysis of credit card purchases to locate human traffickers and apprehend them during the upcoming Super Bowl in Minneapolis. When her bureaucratic bosses turn her down, she retreats to her favorite coffee shop, where she first meets Leilani, a young sex worker with an abusive boyfriend. Jesse’s lingering guilt about her past as a prolific shoplifter and purveyor of fake IDs—the latter of which led to a friend’s death—makes her determined to pursue her plan to bring sex traffickers to justice on the nearby campus of North Prairie University. There, groomers force “work-study associates” into sex work at northern Minnesota resorts frequented by police, congressmen, and other powerful people; among those groomers is Jesse’s boss, the senior vice president of operations at Uncle Sam Bank, who frames her for fraud. Scott’s novel opens with the discovery of a dead body in the Mississippi River—a pitch-perfect beginning for any thriller—and keeps the intrigue coming in briskly paced, short chapters that reflect its protagonist’s no-nonsense style; they also highlight her tendency to attract dangerous elements, whether she’s actively looking for pimps or just working at Dairy Queen. Tense action scenes and courtroom intrigue are coupled with Christian messaging that ramps up near the book’s end, focused primarily on the Sermon on the Mount. However, even non-Christian readers will find the novel noteworthy for its realistic, though never graphic, depiction of the dark world of human trafficking; these scenes, the author notes, are largely drawn from his own interviews with a former gang leader, pimp, and drug dealer. Fans of Scott’s previous novels will be treated to a cameo by world-saving IT guy Jerry Barkley, which subtly suggests a fictional thriller-verse.

—Kirkus Reviews

More about real-world online threats

Friday, Feb. 2, 2018, 6:30 p.m.

Who’s in Superbowl LII anyway? Who cares? Jesse Jonsen sipped her latte at the Manitou Coffee in the Minneapolis skyway and scrolled through pictures of jeans. This horrible week of sending suspicious activity reports into a law-enforcement black hole was finally over. Let the football crazies own downtown for the weekend. Maybe she would accept Mom’s standing offer to go to church in the suburbs with her Sunday morning, just to get away. Or maybe she’d sleep right through until Monday morning. She chuckled silently. Predators and perverts. This is the part of Superbowl week nobody highlights in the glossy brochures.

“Act like you know me. Please.”

Jesse looked up from her tablet.

Late teens. Tall. Native American maybe? And scantily dressed, which made no sense in early February in Minneapolis. Unless…

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Interested in a real-world trafficking victim story? Read The True Story of Canadian Human Trafficking, by Paul Boge.

Trafficking victims often feel trapped and forgotten. Thanks to the real-world St. Paul Hotel for standing in for the fictional Norra lekplatsen for these pictures. Also thanks to Joan,Nicole, and Caleb for posing for them.