Raffel, Keith 1951-

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Raffel, Keith 1951-

PERSONAL:

Born 1951; married; wife's name Teri; children: four. Education: Attended writing classes at the University of California.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Palo Alto, CA. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Entrepreneur and writer. UpShot Corporation, founder, 1997; worked for several high-tech companies.

WRITINGS:

Dot.Dead: A Silicon Valley Mystery, Midnight Ink (Woodbury, MN), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Keith Raffel spent two decades working for high-tech companies in Silicon Valley in California. Appropriately, his first mystery, Dot.Dead: A Silicon Valley Mystery, is set in these familiar environs. "You write what you know and what I knew was the entrepreneurial culture of Silicon Valley," Raffel noted in a Bookreporter.com interview. "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."

In the novel, Accelenet employee Ian Michaels is beaten and knocked out when he enters his house and later finds his maid, Gwendolyn, dead in his bedroom. Ian is surprised to discover that his maid is actually a young woman because he was never there when Gwendolyn worked and was led to believe via their communications that she was an older woman. When police investigate the murder, they find out from Gwendolyn's family and friends that she had a crush on Ian, leading them to suspect that he murdered her. The only person who believes that Ian is innocent is Gwendolyn's sister, Rowena. "Keith Raffel's expertise in the computer field plus his ability to compose a terrific story combine to make Dot.Dead a spellbinding novel, with a protagonist you won't want to leave until he's safely exonerated," wrote Alan Paul Curtis on the Who Dunnit Web site. Mystery Scene Web site contributor Verna Suit noted that the author "evokes the pleasant Palo Alto environs as it navigates tech company culture and Silicon Valley psychology."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Royse City Herald-Banner, October 10, 2006, review of Dot.Dead: A Silicon Valley Mystery.

San Jose Mercury News, November 15, 2006, Therese Poletti, "Tech Exec Tries His Hand at Mystery Writing: Keith Raffel's Dot.Dead Spins a Tech Tale"; November 18, 2006, Therese Poletti, "Murder Most Dot.com: Mystery by Oracle Exec Brings Tech Culture to Life."

Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal, August 4, 2006, "Who Dunnit?," p. 31.