Thrillers Raffel's first novel,
Dot Dead, was published in 2006 by Midnight Ink, an imprint of
Llewellyn Worldwide of
Woodbury, Minnesota. The murder mystery is set in
Silicon Valley, and centers on Ian Michaels, a young technology executive. Michaels discovers his housekeeper, Gwendolyn Goldberg, dead on his bed when he returns home one day, and is suspected of her murder.
The New York Times called
Dot Dead "a murder mystery worthy of a Steve Jobs keynote presentation". Raffel followed up with his second novel in 2009, entitled
Smasher, which was also published by Midnight Ink.
Smasher continues the story of Ian Michaels as he defends his company from a potential takeover, investigates the work of his aunt at
Stanford University's physics department, and protects his wife—a deputy district attorney—from a mysterious threat. Raffel's third novel,
Drop By Drop: A Thriller, was published in 2011. The story's main character is Sam Rockman, a history professor at Stanford, who loses his wife in a bombing at
San Francisco International Airport. Rockman reunites with a United States senator for whom he had worked before graduate school, and is appointed to the
Senate's Intelligence Committee to investigate the terrorist attack. Raffel's fourth novel,
A Fine and Dangerous Season, was self-published in September 2012 and republished by Thomas & Mercer, an imprint of Amazon Publishing, in November 2013. The work of historical fiction is set during the
Cuban Missile Crisis and is centered upon Nathan Michaels, a salesman for
Hewlett-Packard who knew
President Kennedy two decades earlier during their time at Stanford. Kennedy enlists Michaels to use his connections to a
KGB agent to communicate with Soviet premier
Nikita Khrushchev and resolve the international crisis. Reviews of
Drop By Drop and
A Fine and Dangerous Season have noted Raffel's professional experience in
Washington, D.C. and the verisimilitude with which he portrayed the workings of the government in his novels. Raffel raised the funds to publish and publicize his fifth novel via a
Kickstarter campaign where he crowd-sourced comments, edits, and suggestions. Maris Kreizman of Kickstarter commented, "It was the first time I'd come across a project in which an author specifically solicited editorial feedback from backers…. This was a creative way to invite his audience in closer." In November 2014, Raffel’s novel
Temple Mount was published. In it, high tech entrepreneur Alex Kalman rushes to his dying grandfather’s bedside and finds himself promising to find the
Ark of the Covenant, missing for over 2,500 years. In Israel, Kalman picks up a partner in his quest—archeologist Rivka Golan. Within days they are targeted by a sniper, chased through the streets of Jerusalem by a bulldozer, interrogated by Israeli intelligence, and trapped in a tunnel under Jerusalem’s
Temple Mount.
Nonfiction Since 2023, Raffel has written a nationally-syndicated weekly column distributed by
Creators. A collection of the columns was published in his first book of nonfiction titled,
The Raffel Ticket: Betting on America, which draws heavily on his experiences working on
Capitol Hill,
Silicon Valley, and
Harvard University. The topics include politics, technology, history, education, and the
fragile state of American democracy.
Lee Child, creator of the Jack Reacher thrillers, greeted the book’s publication this way: “Keith Raffel is someone I really pay attention to — he doesn’t always change my mind, but he always makes me think.” Congressman
Jamie Raskin wrote, “Keith Raffel’s experience writing thrillers has prepared him to excel as a columnist lighting up the sky with intellectual fireworks on our stranger-than-fiction politics.”
List of Works •
Dot Dead (2006), •
Smasher (2009), •
Drop By Drop: A Thriller (2011) •
A Fine and Dangerous Season (2012), •
Temple Mount (2014), •
The Raffel Ticket (2025), ==References==