SAN FRANCISCO’S MOST ENDURING MYSTERY:

THE LOST GOLD OF SAN FRANCISCO
By Michael Castleman

Imagine Dick Francis writing about journalism instead of horse racing, and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil set in the City by the Bay instead of Savanah. That should provide some idea of the action, intrigue, local color, and sheer fun of The Lost Gold of San Francisco.

It’s April 18, 1906, the day of the Big One. In the chaos of the earthquake and fire, the San Francsico Mint loses $130,000 of twenty-dollar gold pieces containing an obvious error. Instead of the usual "S" mint mark, these coins have a double mark, "SS." Two are recovered. They become the most famous coins in U.S. history. The rest become the lost gold of San Francisco, and their whereabouts becomes the city’s most enduring mystery.

Fast-forward to 1989. Chester Worthington Gilchrist III, billionaire publisher of San Francisco’s leading newspaper, the Foghorn, donates his priceless coin collection to the California Museum. It contains one of the two known 1906-SS gold pieces. Brash reporter Ed Rosenberg covers the story. Then the founder of the Museum turns up murdered. He has a long list of enemies, but soon, the chief suspect is Gilchrist’s son, Chet, just pardoned after 10 years as a fugitive charged with heroin trafficking. Ed chases the story from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Castro to a posh art gallery on Union Square. More bodies drop, and Ed suspects a connection to the lost gold. Meanwhile, Ed locks horns with a rogue’s gallery of San Francisco characters, including the bulldog owner of the alternative weekly newspaper, and the swashbuckling founder of a controversial magazine that mixes investigative reporting and naked women. For help, Ed turns to a rabbinical school dropout who shoots a mean game of pool, a young Chinese-American reporter with a black belt in karate, and an exotic woman with a talent for public relations, who’s even more talented in private. Soon Ed isn’t just reporting the story. Someone is shooting at him.

The Lost Gold of San Francisco is a gripping, intricately plotted thrill ride vividly set during the fairy-tale autumn of the Bay Bridge World Series and the Loma Prieta earthquake. The action sizzles. The characters feel real. The historical detail puts you right in the middle of the 1906 earthquake and fire. The portrait of San Francisco in 1989 captures the richness, diversity, and mayhem of life in the city. And the ending will leave you smiling.