Author of Rachel Gold mysteries takes different path in ‘Gourmet Club’ novel

Ellen Futterman, Editor-in-Chief

Published August 12, 2025

Those familiar with native St. Louisan Michael Kahn’s novels might be surprised to learn that his latest one, “The Gourmet Club,” does not include St. Louis lawyer and supersleuth Rachel Gold, save for a brief cameo. After all, 11 of the 14 books Kahn has written over the years have featured the dynamic Ms. Gold.

Asked about this, Kahn said:

“The other three were quite different (including ‘The Mourning Sexton’ published under the pen name Micael Baron). While I am currently working on a new novel that I think of as a modern Jewish version of ‘The Great Gatsby,’ I am quite sure Rachel will soon be retained by a new client seeking resolution of a mystery. Certainly, her pal Benny Goldberg can’t wait to hop on that joy ride.”

Thank goodness. Most of us who have come to know and love Rachel, weren’t ready to bid her goodbye.

Rather than a legal thriller, “The Gourmet Club” is a quieter narrative marked by humor, Jewish cultural elements and an interest in the rhythms of ordinary life. It focuses less on dramatic twists and more on how enduring relationships are built through attention, presence and shared experience. It is set in Chicago, where Kahn and his wife, Jewish Light food writer Margi Lenga Kahn, moved three years ago to be closer to their children and grandchildren.

Beginning in 1981, the plot focuses on four young associates — Gabe, Susan, Eric and Norman — working at a prominent Chicago law firm who start a casual supper club as a way to step back from the long hours and constant demands of their careers. Every few months, they gather with their spouses to share a meal, some wine and conversation.

What begins as a light diversion gradually becomes a meaningful ritual, providing connection and stability as their lives evolve through career shifts, marital challenges, parenthood and the steady march of time.

Spanning 25 years, “The Gourmet Club” traces the lives of these eight individuals through the lens of their recurring dinners.

The Jewish Light recently spoke with Kahn about his decision to take a different path and how, despite leaving St. Louis, the city and its quirks remain a deep part of who he is.

While “The Gourmet Club” is set in Chicago, you weave in several notable nods to St. Louis, from specific food mentions to cultural touchstones. What made you decide to drop those in, and do you see this book as having a kind of Midwestern dual citizenship?

Having been born and raised in U. City, it was only natural that one of my four main characters, Gabe Pollack, along with his wife, Meg, were born and raised in U. City, and like me, alumni of U. City High. Another of the four lawyers, Susan, is a coal miner’s daughter from southern Illinois. So yes, I assembled a Midwestern crew.

Readers from St. Louis might chuckle at some of the subtle Easter eggs. Were you writing with a hometown audience partly in mind? Did any particular St. Louis places or traditions inspire moments in the book, even if they’re dressed in Chicago disguise?

Not as many Easter eggs as in my Rachel Gold mysteries, where Rachel provides readers with a tutorial on St. Louis quirks, from our unique definition of “hoosier” to toasted ravioli to our obsession with where you went to high school. Nevertheless, I’m sure my St. Louis roots worked their way into novel, whether consciously or not.

Your experience as a practicing trial lawyer clearly influenced the story, especially the white-shoe firm setting and courtroom scenes. How much of Gabe, Susan, Norman and Eric’s long-term journey draws directly from your real-life early years at a firm?

My early years as a lawyer helped inform the early years of the careers of the main characters, but their paths soon diverge in crucial ways that none of them (or me) had intended or foreseen at the start of the novel. Thus the novel’s opening quotation of that wise Yiddish maxim, “A mentsh tracht un Got lacht (Man plans, and God laughs).”

Genre expectations shift when readers realize this isn’t a murder mystery, even though your Rachel Gold series is thriller-based. Did you ever feel pressure to introduce a darker twist? What was your goal in choosing a character-driven, “comforting narrative”?

I’d been mulling over this novel for nearly two decades, inspired in part by memories of the Gourmet Club that Margi and I had been part of during our first years in Chicago in the early 1980s. But unlike a plot-driven mystery (where the author needs to know the outcome before he writes the first chapter), the joy here was to follow my protagonists through the years without knowing in advance where they might end up, and they certainly end up in far different places than they would have imagined back in their first year as ambitious graduates from top law schools with big plans for their futures.

The characters’ friendships are tested over years of changing careers, family dynamics and values, something very relatable to longtime St. Louisans who often live in tight-knit, overlapping circles. Was that dynamic in any way modeled on your own experience in the St. Louis legal or Jewish communities?

Until you mentioned it, I hadn’t realized the way my St. Louis Jewish heritage informed the novel. While there are parallels in Chicago, one St. Louis example is our gourmet club of dear friends that lasted for more than 20 years (until several moved to other cities). So, too, the St. Louis Jewish community is a tight one. You are rarely more than one degree of separation from any other Jew in town, as has been proven to me over and over when, in another city on business or pleasure, a local Jewish person will ask me whether I know so-and-so in St. Louis, and nine times out of 10 the answer is yes.

About the Contributor

Ellen Futterman, Editor-in-Chief

A native of Westbury, New York, Ellen Futterman broke into the world of big city journalism as a general assignment reporter for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner in the latter part of the 20th century. Deciding that Tinsel Town was not exciting enough for her, she moved on to that hub of glamour and sophistication, Belleville, Ill., where she became a feature writer, columnist and food editor for the Belleville News-Democrat. A year later the St. Louis Post-Dispatch scooped her up, neither guessing at the full range of her talents, nor the extent of her shoe collection. She went on to work at the Post-Dispatch for 25 years, during which time she covered hard news, education, features, investigative projects, profiles, sports, entertainment, fashion, interiors, business, travel and movies. She won numerous major local and national awards for her reporting on “Women Who Kill” and on a four-part series about teen-age pregnancy, ‘Children Having Children.'” Among her many jobs at the newspaper, Ellen was a columnist for three years, Arts and Entertainment Editor, Critic-at-large and Daily Features (Everyday) Editor. She invented two sections from scratch, one of which recently morphed from Get Out, begun in 1995, to GO. In January of 2009, Ellen joined the St. Louis Jewish Light as its editor, where she is responsible for overseeing editorial operations, including managing both staff members and freelancers. Under her tutelage, the Light has won 16 Rockower Awards — considered the Jewish Pulitzer’s — including two personally for Excellence in Commentary for her weekly News & Schmooze column. She also is the communications content editor for the Arts and Education Council of St. Louis. Ellen and her husband, Jeff Burkett, a middle school principal, live in Olivette and have three children. Ellen can be reached at 314-743-3669 or at [email protected].