The Dead Hand: A Rachel Gold Mystery by Michael A. Kahn

The Dead Hand: A Rachel Gold Mystery by Michael A. Kahn --- 227 pages

The tenth book in local attorney/author Michael A. Kahn's clever mystery series features St. Louis attorney Rachel Gold and an abundance of St. Louis references that will add to the enjoyment of local readers.

In her busy law practice, Rachel has handled any number of legally tricky cases and earned a reputation as "tougher than every smart lawyer in town and smarter than every tough lawyer." In “The Dead Hand,” she will need both attributes in order to win two different but tricky cases based on an arcane and obscure bit of Anglo Saxon property law called "The Rule Against Perpetuities."  In one case the trophy widow of a wealthy lingerie manufacturer is attempting to claw back the property deeded to her predecessor in the divorce settlement. In the other the estranged son of a wealthy financier is trying to invalidate the trust created for his much younger half sister by claiming she's not his father's daughter.

Along the way Rachel discovers an unsuspected homicide and meets a man who just might offer her a second chance at love.  Another winner for Kahn.

Click HERE to read the review from Publisher's Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.

Click HERE to read the review from the St. Louis Jewish Light. 

The Sirena Quest by Michael A. Kahn

The Sirena Quest by Michael A. Kahn --- 287 pages

Four college roommates from Barrett College, Class of 1974, reconnect for their twentieth class reunion, and take up the challenge to recover the college mascot, a bronze statue named Serena, that disappeared in 1959 in the aftermath of a college prank that turned disastrous.

What's at stake?  A $25 million endowment from a billionaire member of the Class of 1959 to their alma mater depends on the return of the long-missing icon during the class reunion, plus an additional award of $3 million dollars to be awarded to Sirena's finders.

Several groups take up the challenge, including the "James Gang:" St. Louis lawyer Louis Solomon, southern California mall mogul Ray Gorman, advertising executive Gordon Cohen and middle school teacher Billy McCormick.

It's a great story, revolving around this quirky quest by a quartet of guys trying to come to terms with  their vanishing youth. And features a cameo appearance by a young, up-and-coming attorney named Rachel Gold, who provides them with a critical lead.

Michael Kahn is an attorney in St. Louis and the author of ten previous mystery books, a number of them set in St. Louis and featuring Rachel Gold.

Click HERE to read Michael Kahn's guest post "The Mystery of Art," on the Mythical Books blog.

Click HERE to read the review in Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read a review in the St. Louis Jewish Light.

Face Value by Michael A. Kahn

Face Value: A Rachel Gold Mystery by Michael A. Kahn --- 253 pages

Attorney by day and author by night, St. Louisian Michael A. Kahn has just published his ninth Rachel Gold mystery. He says it didn't start out to be a Rachel Gold novel, it began as a "homage" to Sherlock Holmes with the character of Stanley Plotkin, a genius afflicted with Asperger's Syndrome and autism. Stanley works in the mailroom of Warner & Olsen, a powerhouse law firm located in downtown St. Louis. When a promising young associate in the firm falls to her death from the adjacent parking garage after leaving work late one night, the police and the medical examiner rule Sari Bashir's death a suicide. Stanley knows otherwise, but struggles to convince anyone to take his evidence seriously because of his disability.

At this point, Kahn realized, he needed someone who would listen to Stanley, and that character was, obviously, Rachel Gold.  Rachel gets involved because Sari interned with her during law school and Stanley's mother is good friends with Rachel's mother. When Sari's cousin and father ask Rachel to review the police file because they are convinced Sari would never take her own life, she can't refuse.

The police are convinced it's suicide because Sari was working a high pressure job, there is no one who benefits from her death, and the attorneys with whom she worked at the law firm all have alibis for the night of her death.  But when another associate at the firm who was friends with Sari confirms that she was worried and concerned about something that wasn't quite right in one of the assignments she was working on at the firm, Rachel finds a wedge to get inside the smooth facade of Warner & Olsen.

The solution  to the mystery of Sari's death involves the Facial Action Coding System, a scientific method of analyzing the muscles involved in facial expression to identify a person's true emotional and mental state. It also involves a complex financial product being used in a Ponzi scheme to defraud investors. With the help of Stanley and other friends of Sari at the law firm, and Rachel's loyal friend Professor Benny Goldberg and her mother (Widow Gold the Elder), Rachel and Stanley achieve justice for Sari.

Loaded with sly literary allusions, St. Louis landmarks and local customs, this a a welcome addition to an intelligent and funny series.  

Click HERE to read an interview with Michael Kahn talking about Face Value.

Click HERE to visit Michael Kahn's web site.

The Flinch Factor by Michael Kahn

The Flinch Factor: A Rachel Gold Mystery by Michael A. Kahn --- 287 pages

Michael Kahn's quirky series of legal thrillers featuring attorney Rachel Gold and set in St. Louis combines local color, sly humor, fast-paced action, and clever plots in one guaranteed engrossing and enjoyable package.

Since Kahn has a full-time day job as an attorney specializing in intellectual property rights, fans have to wait patiently for the appearance of each book in the series, but it's always worth the wait. The Flinch Factor is another winner.

In her previous outing, Rachel became engaged to be married; in this book, she is a very recent widow with a small child and two teenage step-daughters she has taken under her wing. She's also in the middle of a lawsuit, representing a working-class neighborhood trying to fight off a developer who is asking the city for eminenet domain and tax increment financing to redevelop this "blighted area" as a swanky gated community. It appears to be a lost cause, since the city and the developer have the law on their side, so Rachel's last hope is the judge that has been assigned to hear the suit; a judge so notoriously flakey he's known to the entire St. Louis legal community as "The Flinch Factor."

Then Rachel reluctantly agrees to take on another hopeless case: the strange death of Nick Moran, a local contractor adored by every woman whose house he has remodeled. Nick was found dead of a drug overdose in his truck, parked in an isolated area notorious for gay hook-ups, so the police came to the obvious conclusion. But Nick's younger sister is convinced her brother was neither gay nor a drug user.

When Rachel begins digging into the case she finds various bits of evidence that just don't add up to an accidental death. And to her surprise, she discovers a number of connections between Nick's death and the developer in her lost cause lawsuit. Too many connections, in Rachel's opinion, to qualify as coincidence.