The Flinch Factor

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.""