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Silicon Valley Mystery #1
Dot Dead: A Silicon Valley Mystery
When Ian Michaels, a Silicon Valley hotshot, discovers a young, beautiful woman stabbed to death in his house, it takes him a moment to realize that the still-warm corpse is his maid. Far from the gray-haired, cookie-baking grandmother he imagined her to be, Gwendolyn was a stranger to Ian, but her family, old boyfriend, and the Palo Alto police seem to think they were a couple. And despite his best efforts to prove otherwise, the evidence against Ian is growing. It looks like someone is framing Ian for murder, but who?
An executive at a tech firm, Ian is anxious to prove his innocence to his boss and mentor Paul Berk, a Silicon Valley legend. As the investigation heats up so does Ian's interest in Gwendolyn's sister, but can she be trusted?
An executive at a tech firm, Ian is anxious to prove his innocence to his boss and mentor Paul Berk, a Silicon Valley legend. As the investigation heats up so does Ian's interest in Gwendolyn's sister, but can she be trusted?
289 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 1, 2006
10 people are currently reading
75 people want to read
About the author
Keith Raffel
6 books49 followersAs counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, Keith Raffel held a top secret clearance to watch over CIA activities. He has also founded an award-winning Silicon Valley software company, taught writing to Harvard freshmen, run for Congress, supported himself at the racetrack, and worked at a DNA sequencing company. These days he stays busy writing his mysteries and thrillers in his hometown of Palo Alto, California. Check the latest news at http://www.keithraffel.com.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
December 7, 2011
I seldom mention novels here. In fact, I only did it once with the excellent “The Ultimate Cure” by Peter Harboe-Schmidt. I nearly bought by accident dot.dead, the first novel written by Keith Raffel, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur turned into a thriller writer. And I enjoyed it.
There is no point in telling you anything about the story. It may not be very realistic, but which mystery novel is? The description of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto and Stanford University is nice and accurate though and you have the feeling you are back there if you know the places. What I also enjoyed and what is relevant for meare the links with the high-tech start-up world. So let me quote Raffel.
- An interesting comment about motivation to be an entrepreneur (page 42), maybe the most surprising thing in the book! “She asked if the hard work required to start a business was worth it. [...] -[It is] a kind of Catch-22. To found a successful company, you had to think it was more important than anything. But if you were intelligent enough to run such a company, you had to know it wasn’t. Realizing that, you could not have the drive needed to start the next Sun, HP…”
- A much less important detail (page 45): “[The company] had gone public at $12 a share. After three two-for-one splits, [he] had sold the company for $42 a share. An investment like this might explain the [...] comfortable circumstances.” I let you compute the multiple!
- Of course, when you read a fiction about Silicon Valely, you may try to guess if the author found inspiration in real individuals. Paul is the easy one (page 16): “While not quite at the level of Bill Hewlett or Dave Packard, Paul still rated as a Silicon Valley legend. Born in Hungary, Pál Békés had been a baby when his parents carried him across the border into Austria during the 1956 revolution. Paul Berk, as his parents rechristened him, graduated from the Bronx School of Sciences at sixteen and from Stanford…” Well it is not exactly the personal history of Andy Grove at Wikipedia but close enough: “During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, when he was 20, András István Gróf left his home and family and escaped across the border into Austria, where he eventually made his way to the United States in 1957. There, he changed his name to Andrew S. Grove. Arriving in the United States in 1957, with little money, Grove retained a “passion for learning.” He earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the City College of New York in 1960, and earned a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1963.”
- The other people I tried to identify with less success are the board members of the company (page 57): in addition to Paul, there is
” Bryce Smithwick, board member as well as corporate counsel. sat to Paul’s right, leaning forward an Armani-clad leopard.
” Darwin Yancey, the technical genius behind Paul’s previous company. As usual Darwin’s glasees had slipped down his nose so that he peered at Paul with his head cocked back. Darwin had worked eighteen hour days [in the previous start-up] but to everyone one surprise had not followed Paul to [his new start-up]. Instead, he retired with his millions in the south of France. “My wife told me that our firrst twenty years of marriage belonged to work and that the next twenty years belonged to her.”
“A rare representative of her gender in the macho world of top venture capitalists, Margot Fullbright had cofounded Chance and Fullbright. Seated next to me, she had her hands folded on the table like a prim schoolgirl. A sideways glance showed me that the short skirt of her expensive suit was designed to show off the thighs of a Parisian runway model, not a buisiness executive. But Margot, approaching fifty, had a body toned as much as shiatsu, Bikram yoga, and two-thousand-dollar-a-day spas could achieve. Known for her ability to do complex calculations in her head, her mind was in even better shape.
“The fifth board member, wearing his trademark bowtie, hie crew-cut hiar beginning to show a few flecks of gray, was leon Henderson, a Stanford professor. A handful of former students, inculding three Fortune 500 CEOS, had thrown him a sixty-fifth birthday party the previous January. I myself had taken his entrepreneurship course and now met him vevery month or two for breakfast at Stanford’s Tresidder Union, where he offered me parctical advice on management and product positioning.
I do not know who these people are. There are a few women in VC, including Ann Winblad and Esther Dyson. Raffel is right, it is a macho world. They could all exist and look like SV stereotypes.
Another detail on bankers (page 100): “I had the natural prejudice against investment bankers. We worked seventy-hour weeks to make a start-up successful. Then, when the payoff came, investment bankers got a six-percent cut for a few weeks’ effort.”
Raffel could not avoid telling his Silicon Valley history (page 107). Nicely written: “Riding in the back of my parents’ Country Squire station wagon thirty years earlier, I would have been passing apricot orchards and horse trails. We didn’t know it, but they had already been condemned when William Shockley opened a company in 1955 to exploit his invention of the transistor. In an almost biblical sense, Shockley Semiconductor was the progenitor of hundreds of the firms flourishing in the Valley, for people from Shockley begat Fairchild and people from Fairchild begat Intel and someone from Intel begat Apple, and so on. In a variation on the biblical theme, two of Shockley’s most promising disciples, Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce, revolted against the founding father of the Valley to start that first competitor, Fairchild Semiconductor. Shockley was left claiming betrayal and ended his days using his Nobel Prize to defend his indefensible view on eugenics. This drama set the tone for Valley culture: young, brilliant technologists breaking away from companies run by the previous generation of entrepreneurs and founding their own.”
An entertaining novel!
There is no point in telling you anything about the story. It may not be very realistic, but which mystery novel is? The description of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto and Stanford University is nice and accurate though and you have the feeling you are back there if you know the places. What I also enjoyed and what is relevant for meare the links with the high-tech start-up world. So let me quote Raffel.
- An interesting comment about motivation to be an entrepreneur (page 42), maybe the most surprising thing in the book! “She asked if the hard work required to start a business was worth it. [...] -[It is] a kind of Catch-22. To found a successful company, you had to think it was more important than anything. But if you were intelligent enough to run such a company, you had to know it wasn’t. Realizing that, you could not have the drive needed to start the next Sun, HP…”
- A much less important detail (page 45): “[The company] had gone public at $12 a share. After three two-for-one splits, [he] had sold the company for $42 a share. An investment like this might explain the [...] comfortable circumstances.” I let you compute the multiple!
- Of course, when you read a fiction about Silicon Valely, you may try to guess if the author found inspiration in real individuals. Paul is the easy one (page 16): “While not quite at the level of Bill Hewlett or Dave Packard, Paul still rated as a Silicon Valley legend. Born in Hungary, Pál Békés had been a baby when his parents carried him across the border into Austria during the 1956 revolution. Paul Berk, as his parents rechristened him, graduated from the Bronx School of Sciences at sixteen and from Stanford…” Well it is not exactly the personal history of Andy Grove at Wikipedia but close enough: “During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, when he was 20, András István Gróf left his home and family and escaped across the border into Austria, where he eventually made his way to the United States in 1957. There, he changed his name to Andrew S. Grove. Arriving in the United States in 1957, with little money, Grove retained a “passion for learning.” He earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the City College of New York in 1960, and earned a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1963.”
- The other people I tried to identify with less success are the board members of the company (page 57): in addition to Paul, there is
” Bryce Smithwick, board member as well as corporate counsel. sat to Paul’s right, leaning forward an Armani-clad leopard.
” Darwin Yancey, the technical genius behind Paul’s previous company. As usual Darwin’s glasees had slipped down his nose so that he peered at Paul with his head cocked back. Darwin had worked eighteen hour days [in the previous start-up] but to everyone one surprise had not followed Paul to [his new start-up]. Instead, he retired with his millions in the south of France. “My wife told me that our firrst twenty years of marriage belonged to work and that the next twenty years belonged to her.”
“A rare representative of her gender in the macho world of top venture capitalists, Margot Fullbright had cofounded Chance and Fullbright. Seated next to me, she had her hands folded on the table like a prim schoolgirl. A sideways glance showed me that the short skirt of her expensive suit was designed to show off the thighs of a Parisian runway model, not a buisiness executive. But Margot, approaching fifty, had a body toned as much as shiatsu, Bikram yoga, and two-thousand-dollar-a-day spas could achieve. Known for her ability to do complex calculations in her head, her mind was in even better shape.
“The fifth board member, wearing his trademark bowtie, hie crew-cut hiar beginning to show a few flecks of gray, was leon Henderson, a Stanford professor. A handful of former students, inculding three Fortune 500 CEOS, had thrown him a sixty-fifth birthday party the previous January. I myself had taken his entrepreneurship course and now met him vevery month or two for breakfast at Stanford’s Tresidder Union, where he offered me parctical advice on management and product positioning.
I do not know who these people are. There are a few women in VC, including Ann Winblad and Esther Dyson. Raffel is right, it is a macho world. They could all exist and look like SV stereotypes.
Another detail on bankers (page 100): “I had the natural prejudice against investment bankers. We worked seventy-hour weeks to make a start-up successful. Then, when the payoff came, investment bankers got a six-percent cut for a few weeks’ effort.”
Raffel could not avoid telling his Silicon Valley history (page 107). Nicely written: “Riding in the back of my parents’ Country Squire station wagon thirty years earlier, I would have been passing apricot orchards and horse trails. We didn’t know it, but they had already been condemned when William Shockley opened a company in 1955 to exploit his invention of the transistor. In an almost biblical sense, Shockley Semiconductor was the progenitor of hundreds of the firms flourishing in the Valley, for people from Shockley begat Fairchild and people from Fairchild begat Intel and someone from Intel begat Apple, and so on. In a variation on the biblical theme, two of Shockley’s most promising disciples, Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce, revolted against the founding father of the Valley to start that first competitor, Fairchild Semiconductor. Shockley was left claiming betrayal and ended his days using his Nobel Prize to defend his indefensible view on eugenics. This drama set the tone for Valley culture: young, brilliant technologists breaking away from companies run by the previous generation of entrepreneurs and founding their own.”
An entertaining novel!
July 15, 2010
A fun mystery in a familiar area, an enjoyable, fast read.
July 23, 2018
Enjoyable murder mystery set in Silicon Valley. Legit descriptions of high tech world and life in the valley (where I live and write). I particularly enjoyed the main character's experience with questions of morality and his Jewish faith.
Read
December 22, 2025This was a great mystery. I had it pegged as the friend the whole time and thought they had caught him until he disappeared and we found out it wasn’t him.
December 6, 2010
If you love a bit of mystery with a hint of romance, you'll love Keith Raffel's Dot Dead. Ian Michaels works for a Silicon Valley company, when he was assaulted by someone coming home from work. Not only that, the next day, his maid, Gwendolyn Goldberg, turns up dead on his bed. The police are after Ian, since they believe he's a couple, due to some evidence hints that way, when he never met her before. On the day of his funeral, he meets Rowena, Gwen's sister, who helps her discover who killed her. Not only that, once Ian's on bail, things turns a nosedive at work, when his presentation for his company didn't go as planned, along with the funeral. While Rowena and Ian investigate the murder, the cops are against them, while other suspects turns up suspicious, including Ian's boss Paul. When they're closing in on each other, the clues are obvious, as Ian and Rowena fall in love with each other. In the end, there's a surprise that you didn't see coming. Good suspense for a debut mystery author!
October 17, 2010
I was expecting some high-tech shenanigans and corporate power plays. The little bits of that in the story only provided background. This was a simple, suburban murder mystery. It could have taken place anywhere, not just Silicon Valley.
The good: There was a mystery to solve, and it unfolded through the course of the book without telegraphing too much too soon. The prose was decent with occasional highlights.
The bad: The pace was leisurely. The cast of characters were all too laid back, including the hero and the villain. There needed to be more conflict and more suspense. I found myself skimming and skipping without missing much of the plot at all. The wrap-up did rely on a few coincidences.
Two stars means I found it to be average, but not bad.
The good: There was a mystery to solve, and it unfolded through the course of the book without telegraphing too much too soon. The prose was decent with occasional highlights.
The bad: The pace was leisurely. The cast of characters were all too laid back, including the hero and the villain. There needed to be more conflict and more suspense. I found myself skimming and skipping without missing much of the plot at all. The wrap-up did rely on a few coincidences.
Two stars means I found it to be average, but not bad.
February 1, 2010
I liked for the setting--Ian's not much a personality, but the pace was fast enough and the premise intriguing. In the back of my mind, I couldn't help remembering Barry Eisler's stand-alone, Fault Line, from last year--that was more of a thriller but really got into the tech inventor's mind set. All these smart, smart people doing dumb things!
June 23, 2013
Appart from the many, many spelling and grammatical errors, I have just one question. How did Rowena find Gwennie's key among her sisters things if she was killed at work, and did not return home? The plot of this story was not well thought out at all. Maybe it's just me, but a simple mistake like that in an elaborate mystery seems like amateur work.
July 30, 2011
Just fun! Murder mystery set in Palo Alto with authentic characters, a believable plot, and a couple of good (although not entirely unpredictable) twists. Authored by the founder of upshot.com - an impressive novel by a former entrepreneur.
July 15, 2013
Thoroughly enjoyed the book. Excellent pacing, and a believable protagonist trying to figure out how his cleaning lady ended up dead in his bedroom while the cops are sure he did it. Fast moving, good authorial voice.
April 12, 2014
Couldn't put it down! Fascinating murder mystery takes place in the setting of a fast rising Silicon Valley high-tech firm. Upscale Californians, romantic triangles and the usual cast of DA, cops, attorneys, etc. round out a very satisfying read.
July 1, 2014
Hard to follow at times. The author will be talking to someone in one paragraph and the next he is talking to someone at a different location. Left me wondering how he got from one point to the next.
May 6, 2016
A Rosie nook purchase......
Called a Killer Thriller it was a murder mystery with some interesting twists and turns with the main characters playing detective to save their own reputation. Amateur detectives are always amusing.
Called a Killer Thriller it was a murder mystery with some interesting twists and turns with the main characters playing detective to save their own reputation. Amateur detectives are always amusing.
June 25, 2007
Fun to read a book set in a geographical area I know. Good fast read. Some surprises, although I was able to guess the culprit.
October 3, 2007
easy and enjoyable read, fun mystery and very fun to read of areas known in the bay area. Would recommend.
June 16, 2008
Horrible...really, just awful. Not my fault though, was in desperate need of a book and it was just sitting on roommate's bookshelf.
November 29, 2011
Fun read set in Palo Alto. Murder mystery with some tech trivia intermingled. Would recommend.
July 25, 2012
I started this book at 5pm and finished it at 8am the next morning! I fell asleep with it in my hand and couldn't wait to finish it as soon as I woke up! Great mystery!!!!
August 15, 2012
My favorite of the Keith Raffel novels is 'Dot Dead.' It is face paced, unique subject matter and demands suspension of disbelief from the first page.
September 21, 2012
Keith Raffel has written a number a number of mysteries oriented around the dot com world, published only as ebooks. This is the best one.
June 12, 2013
Good coverage of Silicon Valley, specifically Palo Alto and Stanford. The author knows his places and society. Reasonably good mystery/thriller.
99 cent buy from Bookbub.
99 cent buy from Bookbub.
May 26, 2014
Intriguing mystery with lots of inventive plot twists and a deep understanding of Silicon Valley.
November 4, 2014
A really well-written mystery story that's a cut above the usual. I also enjoyed the Palo Alto setting.
August 5, 2014
clever and unusual mystery story. enjoyed it.
June 30, 2015
This was a pleasant book, but the mystery was just too predictable.
October 8, 2008
Not the best murder mystery ever written but is sent in Palo Alto so fun to read.
October 23, 2011
A fun, fast pace mystery but if you are looking for a techno mystery move along.
January 7, 2015
The story is light and simple but I love it
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews