The Flinch Factor: A Rachel Gold Mystery

Several years have passed since we last saw Rachel Gold. The stunning and savvy attorney was then engaged to be married. Since, she's become a mother, then a much-grieving widow, and now she is embroiled in a lost cause-the Frankenstein Case-where she represents a blue-collar neighborhood fighting a powerful developer intent on bulldozing their homes to erect a swanky gated community. Who's pushing her here? Of course, her mother. Rachel's strategy will be based on the wild card that is the judge on the case-a judge so wacky he's known to the St Louis Bar as The Flinch Factor (think the spawn of Judge Judy and Pee Wee Herman). Plus Rachel gains another new client: Susannah, sister of Nick Moran, the heartthrob of every woman whose kitchen he remodeled. Nick has been murdered, found slumped on the front seat of his pickup along an isolated lane known to the vice squad as Gay Way, his pants unzipped, a coil of rubber tubing on the seat, an empty syringe on the floor. His female groupies are, to say the least, stunned. Gay? No way. Although Susannah seems the classic blindly adoring younger sister, a skeptical Rachel agrees to check it out. To her surprise, she turns up facts and witnesses suggesting that maybe, just maybe, Nick's death was staged as an overdose during sex. Then things rapidly grow darker in what increasingly becomes a real Frankenstein of a case.... Kahn, master of the plot twist, writes with warmth and humor but maintains an almost Old-Testament respect for justice. For fans of the Kellermans and Scott Turow, who says, "The Flinch Factor is another welcome addition to the wonderful Rachel Gold series, a clever engrossing legal thriller punctuated by sharp humor and many unexpected developments."

About the Author :
Michael A. Kahn is the award-winning author of several novels, praised by Publishers Weekly for their "intelligent, breezy dialogue and clever plotting." A graduate of Amherst College and Harvard Law School, Mr. Kahn began his literary career writing free-lance feature articles for Chicago Magazine while teaching fifth grade in the Chicago public schools. Now a trial attorney in St. Louis, he wrote his first novel on a dare from his wife, who got sick of hearing him announce, each time he finished a paperback thriller that he'd purchased at an airport newsstand, "I could write a better book than this." "Then write one," she finally said, "or please shut up."