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...

The smart and savvy Rachel Gold has established herself in Chicago legal circles as a tough litigator, when a case calls for moxie, and a discreet counselor, when a client faces what the chairman of her former firm, Abbott & Windsor, labels an "awkward situation."The odd disappearance and messy suicide of Stoddard Anderson, the managing partner of the St. Louis office of Abbott & Windsor, certainly qualifies as an "awkward situation," especially when the firm learns that the only way Anderson's widow can collect the full life insurance proceeds is to prove that his death was an accident, and the only way a suicide can be an "accident" is if the decedent was clinically insane at the time of his death. Abbott & Windsor is, to say the least, reluctant to argue in court that the managing partner of one of its offices was clinically insane. And thus Rachel Gold is retained to represent the widow in what all hope will be a quick resolution of a straightforward matter. But Rachel soon...

The New York Times Sunday Magazine piece famously opened: "She has pouting lips and high round breasts. Thousands of men have dreamt of her. Hundreds have chased after her. Two have died in pursuit. Her name is Sirena, she weighs 193 pounds, and she vanished in 1959. Without a trace."Barrett College's legendary Greco-Roman sculpture's fate was still a hot topic in 1970 when four roommates began their freshman year at the New England school. They've gone their separate ways for years. But as the 1994 commencement approaches, they are about to reunite to meet a challenge thrown down by a Class of '59 hedge-fund billionaire. He has pledged a $25 million endowment plus a $3 million purse to her finder(s) if Sirena is restored to Barrett by June 17th, the date of his 35th reunion, the college's sesquicentennial celebration—and our foursome's 20th class reunion.Although they are not alone in their pursuit—groups of alumni, including a pair of aggressive and...

The phone call Rachel Gold received from a nervous CPA almost seemed routine. Rosenthal wanted to meet with her to discuss something confidential about a corporate merger. Hardly an unusual request of a lawyer. But Rosenthal never made it to the meeting—and when his corpse is discovered, it was clear he had died under circumstances too bizarre to believe. Having never even met the murdered CPA, Rachel is willing to let the police try to close the case. But that all changes with the next victim—someone so dear to Rachel that the hunt for the killer becomes her personal vendetta.What lethal facts did the slain accountant find buried in the books of Armstrong Bioproducts while doing the pre-merger due diligence? Was there any connection between that pharmaceutical company and the presidential campaign of Rachel's political hero, Dr. Douglas Armstrong? Armstrong, the founder of Armstrong Bioproducts, is now the junior senator from Missouri. And what was the...

"Dead hand" is the English translation of the Latin term "mortmain," which the law dictionary defines as "the influence of the past regarded as controlling the present." For Rachel Gold, a more accurate term would be "zombies." In particular, the wealthy zombies who seek to control the living—and especially their families—from the grave through legal documents prepared before they died.In The Dead Hand, Rachel represents two women—one a widow, one a divorcee—in a pair of nasty zombie lawsuits, the outcome of each of which hinges upon a clause in a dead man's document...

As St. Louis attorney Rachel Gold knows firsthand, the grueling hours and demands of Big Law take their toll on young lawyers. Some turn to drugs, some quit the profession, and occasionally one quits altogether. According to the medical examiner, Sari Bashir quit for good on leaving work one Thursday night when she fell to her death from the eighth floor of the downtown garage adjacent to her firm. The police rule her death a suicide and move on._x000D_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._x000D_Rachel had been close with Sari, who worked for her during law...

After the death of her father, attorney Rachel Gold has returned to her hometown of St. Louis to spend more time with her mother. The savvy and beautiful Rachel, who made a name for herself in complex corporate litigation in Chicago, finds herself enmeshed in Landau v. Landau, a high-stakes divorce case far nastier than any of her former lawsuits. And, as she will soon find out, far deadlier.Rachel's client is Eileen Landau, the best friend of her sister Ann. Eileen and Ann are just two of many wealthy, bored housewives who get their kicks three days a week in an aerobics classes conducted by the handsome fitness guru, Andros, at an upscale gym. Eileen, however, gets some additional kicks once or twice a week with Andros at an upscale hotel.Shortly after his last tryst with Eileen, Andros is found dead. The coroner determines the cause of death as cyanide poisoning. The trail of clues leads not to Eileen but to Ann, Rachel's sister, who was having her own affair with...

Rachel Gold blames it on her mother, Sarah, who convinced her to file what seemed like a simple age-discrimination case on behalf of Ruth Alpert, her mother;s best friend. Ruth had been fired just shy of her sixty-third birthday by Beckmann Engineering, a corporate powerhouse known in St. Louis, both for its charitable contributions and vicious lawyers.The first hint that the case might not be so simple comes when a key witness is gunned down in a parking lot before Rachel;s eyes. The second comes when Rachel learns that Ruth has knowledge of confidential information that could transform her simple age claim into a massive, multi-million-dollar conspiracy case spanning decades.With the help of her best friend, Benny Goldberg"the grossest (and funniest) law professor in America"the savvy and beautiful Rachel Gold struggles to make sense of a dark scheme hatched more than a fifty years ago, a conspiracy with a bloody trail of murder, mayhem, and treachery that implicates some of...

Every law firm has its backroom bench of brilliant workaholic nerds ferocious in their commitment to the law and to their clients. Such a player is Milton Bernstein of Abbott & Windsor. He's highly valued by the partners for his skills, but untested in the courtroom.Milton's younger brother, Hal, is his polar opposite-strikingly handsome, a high-school baseball legend in St. Louis who was on his way to the major leagues until he destroyed his prospects in a motorcycle accident. Hal had been, and still is, the adored Bernstein brother-worshipped by his mother, his aunts, and the rest of his family, plus all the high school and college cheerleaders. Milton has learned to live with his lower star-power while Hal unabashedly admires Milton's career and happy marriage.Neither brilliant nor driven, Hal has to face up to earning a living. For now he's killing time as a lifeguard at an exclusive country club. His days at the pool are mostly filled with women, kids, and fantasies about...

Gorgeous and gutsy attorney Rachel Gold is ready for war on behalf of Sally Wade, who arrives in her office bruised and beaten the morning after Neville McBride, her soon-to-be-ex-husband, broke into her house and savagely attacked her.McBride, a prominent and wealthy member of the St. Louis power elite, has retained an attack-dog defense lawyer. Before Rachel can get her lawsuit on file, Sally's corpse is found tied up in her bed, apparently strangled. The clues point to McBride, the prime suspect, and the police soon view the case as essentially closed.But doubts begin to creep into Rachel's mind as she learns more about Sally's personal life. With her rough-and-ready best pal, Benny Goldberg, Rachel works her way through a labyrinth of strip club operators, crooked cops, slimy country club types, double-dealing hookers, and the hog butcher from hell.

Savvy attorney Rachel Gold has represented a few celebrity clients in her career, but none anywhere close to Angela Green, the most famous abused housewife in America. She is surely the only former housewife to receive an award from the NAACP and an interview with Oprah while serving time for killing her husband. Her recently announced book and motion picture deal has her enmeshed in a new legal controversy"a Son of Sam lawsuit over the proceeds from that deal.To defend her in that lawsuit, Angela retains Rachel Gold, who already has her hands full with a wacky ostrich sexual abuse case, compliments of a referral from her best friend, Benny Goldberg.As Rachel digs into the underlying facts of the murder case, she comes across issues that were never pursued at trial"loose ends no one bothered tying up because of the dramatic nature of the incriminating evidence. Is it possible, Rachel wonders, that Angela is innocent, that she was framed by someone with an entirely different...