Customer Reviews

Firm Ambitions (Rachel Gold Mystery Series)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Rachel Gold is cool. Tho a lawyer, she spends most of her time 'detecting' along with her mother and a lifelong friend, Benny, a rotund fancier of foods and females. They are all working on freeing her sister Ann from a murder rap. Good book, a little heavy on the sexual inuendo and 'out' uendo too. Lots of plots, counter plots, dead ends and runarounds. It doesn't fully resolve until almost the final page.

Pat

Rachel Gold is Everywoman of today! She is smart, witty, shrewd, career-minded, independent and clever. Michael A. Kahn does an excellent job of embodying a successful female lawyer, and can keep a reader captivated. I was never much into mysteries, but I picked up this book on a whim and when I got home, I couldn't put it down! So many twists and turns, plenty of drama and quite a few laughs. Highly recommended!

a swarthy fitness guru who sexercises with rich suburbanites is poisoned. a weak link in an otherwise praiseworthy rachel gold series. a straightforward who-done-it lacking the usual consideration of weightier legal issues.

On second thought, she really didn't solve the mystery. Our Rachel did find out why someone was murdered, but didn't really find out who done it. In the less than clever denouement the killer more or less walks up to Ms. Gold and admits the crime. The author can't think of a way for our sleuth to solve the mystery? You sort of get the feeling that Michael Kahn put the names of all the characters on a dart board and chose the one hit by his flying dart to be the big baddie. I don't know if I care for this random selection technique. Kahn's Rachel Gold books have gotten good reviews, so maybe this just isn't one of his better ones. The main characters are fairly interesting, and the male author seems to do a good job of being able to write about a female protagonist, but all in all this book is not very fast paced.

#3 in Kahn's Rachel Gold series.

The mystery is less interesting, more prosaic than that in the first two books. But it held my attention. Besides, I am primarily reading to spend time with Rachel, especially her hilarious interactions with Benny.

Interesting note: The first book was set in Chicago. In #2, the heroine still lived there, but spent the entire time in St Louis (her hometown) on a case. I guess the author found that setting more interesting (I certainly do), because now Rachel lives back in St Louis full time. Good choice, I think.

SPOILER: I do think the author has fallen into a weird recurring pattern with the heroine's love life. Here's hoping that is dropped for book #4.

This book is firm proof that you can't judge a book by its cover. It has a very attractive cover. I hate the book. It is a legal mystery and I found that I did not care that the victim had been killed because he was immensely unlikeable, I did not care that any number of possible suspects had been falsely accused - they were unlikeable twits that deserved some trouble just for being so stupid. I did not like the lawyer (the main character) although I did like her mom.

So, when the reader cares not about the murder, the victim or the suspects, he should stop reading, which I did after just 60 pages.