Grave Designs – A Rachel Gold Mystery

Grave Designs
321 Pages
ISBN 9781464204388

Graham Anderson Marshall III of Abbott & Windsor was the archetype of the powerful senior partner at a major corporate law firm. But then came his bizarre death, the kinky details of which his firm tried to squelch. After his funeral, other curious details of his private life surfaced, the most troubling—and potentially embarrassing, at least for his former firm—is a codicil to his will establishing a large trust fund for the care and maintenance of a grave at a pet cemetery. The issue? Neither Marshall nor anyone in his family ever owned a pet, much less one named Canaan. The problem? Abbott & Windsor is named as the sole beneficiary if the trust is deemed invalid, which means it has a conflict of interest.

And thus, Abbott & Windsor turns to Rachel Gold, the savvy young attorney who left the prestigious firm to open her own law office. Rachel is retained to find out what is in Canaan’s grave at Wagging Tail Estates. Amused and bemused, Rachel assumes she will be able to wrap up the assignment in a few days. By then, however, the grave has been robbed. All that’s left is the gravestone with the mysterious name CANAAN etched in marble.

Teaming up with her best buddy, the brilliant Benny Goldberg, Rachel sets out in search of the stolen contents of that grave. An ominous trail of clues leads into the heart of a secret legacy of three centuries of blackmail, sexual depravity, and murder. While tracking whatever had been in Canaan’s grave, it soon becomes apparent to the team that someone has plans for Rachel Gold’s grave.

Michael A. Kahn

About Michael A. Kahn (St. Louis, Missouri Author)

Michael A. Kahn

Michael Kahn is a trial lawyer by day and an award-winning author at night. He wrote his first novel, Grave Designs, on a challenge from his wife Margi, who got tired of listening to the same answer whenever she asked him about a book he was reading. "Not bad," he would say, "but I could write a better book than that." "Then write one, honey," she finally said, "or please shut up." So he shut up for a long time, and then he wrote one.

A former elementary school teacher, Mike is the author of The Dead Hand and 9 other Rachel Gold novels; a legal thriller, The Mourning Sexton, under the pen name Michael Baron; and The Sirena Quest (2015), a stand-alone novel that he describes, in Hollywood jargon, as "a Baby Boomer version of 'The Big Chill' meets 'The Maltese Falcon.'" His latest novel, Played!, features, as Booklist wrote, "the same sharp dialogue, wit, and clever plotting his fans have come to expect." He is also the author of numerous short stories, including the three collected in A Handful of Gold.

In addition to his day job as a lawyer, he is an adjunct professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, where he teaches a class on censorship and free expression. Married to his high school sweetheart, he is the father of five and the grandfather of, so far, five.