Face Value

"Rachel's fans will enjoy her latest case, which highlights the consequences of greed as well as the abilities of the disabled." ―Booklist

As St. Louis attorney Rachel Gold knows firsthand, the demands of the profession can take a toll on young lawyers. Some turn to drugs, some give up the job and occasionally one gives up altogether. According to the medical examiner, Sari Bashir belongs in the latter category. After she fell from the eighth floor of the downtown garage, the police rule her death a suicide and move on.

However, Stanley Plotkin, the law firm's eccentric mailroom clerk, is sure that Sari was murdered. Stanley, a genius afflicted with Asperger's Syndrome, cannot read emotions from other's facial expressions. To compensate, he studies the voluminous facial action coding system to help him navigate social situations. His mastery of that system has convinced him that Sari was not suicidal. Armed with evidence that only he can see, he turns to Rachel for help. While Sari was her friend, she's reluctant to investigate before an impassioned plea from Sari's grieving father convinces her. With the help of some unlikely allies, Rachel begins uncovering a vast criminal enterprise rife with collateral damage―and Sari's death is only the beginning…

Michael Kahn is a trial lawyer by day and an 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," she finally said, "or please shut up." So he shut up―no easy task for an attorney―and then he wrote one.

Kahn is the award-winning author of: eleven Rachel Gold novels; three standalone novels: Played!, The Sirena Quest, and, under the pen name Michael Baron, The Mourning Sexton, and several short stories.

In addition to his day job as a trial 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, seven.