Published: October 10, 2006 03:58 pm      

"Dot.Dead" fun read

“Dot.Dead: A Silicon Valley Mystery” may be Keith Raffel’s first novel, but he knows a thing or two about grabbing a reader’s attention.

How’s this for a Chapter One opening?

“I didn’t see who knocked me out. Two steps into the foyer and a blow to the head brought me to my knees.”

I was hooked.

Ian Michaels, the central character, is a Silicon Valley executive who comes home unexpectedly in the middle of the day to change his mismatched socks before an important meeting, and is conked on the head for seemingly no reason. The police are mystified about the break-in, since nothing appears to be missing.

End of incident? Not quite.

Life just keeps getting worse when Ian is excused from jury duty the next day and returns home to find the body of a beautiful young woman lying on his bed, stabbed to death. He soon realizes she is his maid, whom he’s never met. He hired her through an agency, and they leave Post-It notes to each other on the refrigerator.

In a classic amateur detective mode, Ian sets out to find the killer — an urgent search because circumstantial evidence has led the police to believe he and the dead woman had been involved in an affair gone wrong. He is also anxious to prove his innocence to his boss and mentor, because he is due to give a presentation which may result in his becoming the heir apparent in the firm..

The setting for the story is Palo Alto, Calif., where the author grew up and became part of the high-tech industry. In 1997 he founded his own software company, Upshot Corporation, which won numerous awards from press and analysts before being sold in 2003 to Siebel Systems for $70 million dollars. He still works for the company as group vice president.

“You write what you know, and what I knew was the entrepreneurial culture of Silicon Valley,” Raffel has said. “In writing ‘Dot.Dead’ I tried to capture the Valley’s zeitgeist, the monomania focused on bringing the next great product to the market and making millions along the way.”

What appeals to me about Raffel’s tale is that it falls into the category of stories about ordinary people who get caught up in extraordinary circumstances. Oftentimes the character is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Remember Graham Greene’s “The Ministry of Fear,” about a man who is pursued after he wins a cake at a fair (not just any cake)?

Or the Hitchcock film “North by Northwest” in which Cary Grant is spirited away by two heavies who mistake his identity. An even earlier Hitchcock film, “The Thirty-Nine Steps,” based on a book by John Buchan, involves another innocent caught in a web of circumstances.

The reader can’t help putting himself into the story and identifying with the problem. “How could this have happened to me? Who can I trust to call for help? Will anyone believe me?”

With any book I enjoy, I invariably find myself casting the characters for a movie version. It’s not a conscious effort — it just happens, and this book was no exception. Ian Michaels took on the appearance of British actor Nathaniel Parker, who is currently starring in the Inspector Lynley series on PBS’s “Mystery!” He’s going to have to lose the accent, but the face is right.

Rowena, the dead woman’s sister who becomes important in Ian’s life, is most definitely one of the ad representatives here at the Herald-Banner. Again, it just happened as I read. I’m still working on the actor to play Ian’s boss, Paul Berk. At this stage he bears a remarkable resemblance to the picture of the author, although actor Mandy Patinkin might also do.

In an “Author Talk” article on the Internet, Raffel talked about the difficulties of a yet-unpublished author. He said he found considerable similarities in getting his book published and in starting his company. “In starting a company, you need to find investors who believe in you, who will back your vision and will put millions of dollars to work on making it a reality. Except that the money at stake is a lot less, that’s pretty similar to finding a publisher. In both you need to believe in yourself and what you’re doing because there will be incessant attacks on your ego ... Don’t give up. Rejection comes with the territory. What separates published writers from the wannabes is the ability to keep going in the face of lots of no’s.”

Few established writers have not had their share of turn-downs in the beginning.

Readers who enjoy a fun-to-read, contemporary mystery story can be grateful that Raffel followed his own advice and persevered.



“Dot.Dead: A Silicon Valley Mystery” by Keith Raffel is available in softcover at $13.95 from Midnight Ink Books at www.midnightinkbooks.com or order it from bookstores using ISBN No. 0-7387-0833.



Ferguson is a feature writer for the Herald-Banner.