The Immortal Game

Meet Edwin Bishop: a multi-millionaire entrepreneur who has founded and taken public several very successful software game companies. Highly intelligent, arrogant, yet unschooled in social graces, Bishop lives an eccentric life in his Silicon Valley mansion with several paid female companions. 
Bishop has developed a software program to play chess against human opponents that he claims is the most advanced ever written, but before it is released, he finds that the software has been stolen when he stumbles across a vendor demonstrating the game at a trade show. 
Enter August Riordan: a jazz bass-playing private eye who is cynical, irreverent and given to speaking his mind with unreconstructed candor. Although Bishop wants to hire a discreet private detective with a strong sense of professional ethics, as Riordan says, It was his tough luck he happened to pick me. 
Riordan careens through the very modern milieu of Silicon Valley in his quest for the chess program, enmeshing himself in more than just high technology. Jazz music, the underground world of S&amp;M and an unlikely partnership with Chris Duckworth, a smart aleck gay man whom he meets at a bar called The Stigmata, are all part of the intriguing adventure. 
Full of well-drawn, idiosyncratic characters, fast dialogue and compelling and realistic portrayals of many San Francisco Bay Area locales, The Immortal Game is a very fresh and entertaining mystery in the tradition of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. 
This special edition from Poltroon Press is illustrated with 30 photographs and incorporates many of the design elements of the famous Borzoi Books first edition of The Big Sleep published by Knopf in 1939.

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Coggins, Mark

Mystery

Poltroon Pr

This chilling technological thriller finds venture capitalist Ted Valmont belatedly informed that the chief technical officer of NeuroStimix-a biotech firm in which he has invested-is missing. Valmont engages August Riordan to assist in the search and the men soon discover that the disappearance is part of a larger conspiracy to use NeuroStimix technology for perverse applications. With black-and-white photographs that add a unique aspect to this genre, this book is a sardonic study of the post dot-com world of Silicon Valley and venture capital.

Vulture Capital (August Riordan Series, 2)

Literature & Fiction

Literary

When the world's most innovative computer chess software is stolen, wisecracking, jazz bass-playing PI August Riordan is hired to find it. Sifting through a San Francisco peopled with bruising, ex-NFL henchmen, transvestite techno geeks, and alluring, drug-addicted dominatrices, Riordan has got his work cut out for him. But with a smart-ass attitude like Riordan's, nothing is easy ... A darkly comic sojourn through a town unrecognizable from the Tony Bennett song and the Rice-a-Roni ads, The Immortal Game is a Shamus and Barry award nominee and a San Francisco Chronicle Book of the Year.

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

When venture capitalist Ted Valmont is belatedly informed that the chief scientist of NeuroStimix--a biotech firm in which he has invested--is missing, it's not just business, it's personal. Not only is the scientist an old school chum, but his disappearance jeopardizes the development of NeuroStimix's most important product: a device intended to aid spinal cord injury victims. Since Valmont's twin brother, Tim, was paralyzed in a college driving accident, finding the scientist and getting him back into harness is of utmost importance to both brothers. Valmont engages August Riordan to assist in the search and the men soon discover that the disappearance is part of a larger conspiracy to use NeuroStimix technology for perverse applications. Terrorism. Prostitution. Slave labor. These are just the beginning. And when a beautiful, mysterious young woman comes onto the scene, it's impossible to say whether the technology will provide the ultimate means to save them all or be the catalyst for torturous, self-inflicted deaths...

Vulture Capital

Caroline Stockwell has a secret: she and her best friend Monica are "cam girls." Soliciting cash donations and gifts via Amazon.com wish lists from anonymous admirers, the young women have put up a web site featuring still photographs, video and blogs to help pay their way through art college. But when Caroline goes missing and her mother Ellen engages jazz bass-playing PI August Riordan to find her, Riordan discovers her secret and it appears to everyone that someone she met through the web site is responsible for her disappearance. Set against the real-world backdrop of Internet predators using social networking sites like Facebook to find and ensnare their victims, Candy from Strangers is the first novel to explore the phenomenon of teenagers and young adults displaying themselves online in exchange for material favors—often without their parents' knowledge—which some are calling the newest form of prostitution.

Candy from Strangers

Runoff

Private investigator August Riordan returns to San Francisco to avenge the death of his friend and one-time partner, Chris Duckworth. Duckworth has taken over Riordan's old business, his old office and even his old apartment, and Riordan suspects Duckworth's death is linked to the missing person case he was working when he died. An alluring young woman named Angelina hired Duckworth to look for her half-sister, but what Riordan finds instead is a murderous polyamorous family intent on claiming a previously unknown manuscript from dead Beat writer Jack Kerouac. Following clues from Duckworth and a trail of mutilated bodies left by the family, Riordan soon realizes that avenging his partner will first involve recovering the manuscript-and then saving Angelina and himself from kidnap, torture and death. As the bodies pile up, Riordan must work with old allies and enemies to untangle Duckworth's last case before time runs out. Praise for THE DEAD BEAT SCROLL: "Slick, sardonic and suspenseful-everything a great thriller should be." -Lee Child, bestselling author of the Jack Reacher novels "Fast-paced excursion into the remnants of San Francisco's lost bohemia...Alternately comic, sad, lurid, impossible, blasphemous, and just plain fun." -Domenic Stansberry, Edgar Award-winning author of the North Beach Mystery Series "Glorious potpourri of violence, black humor, sex, and a hunt for a lost manuscript... Read The Dead Beat Scroll, and enjoy again the type of mystery novel that defined this genre." -New York Journal of Books

The Dead Beat Scroll (August Riordan)

Down & Out Books

Geisha Confidential: An August Riordan Mystery

The first issue in a new literary adventure that brings together the work of writers who vary in style and content, edited by bestselling author Seth Harwood. These are stories that will stay with you for a long while.

Ground Fiction: Vol. 3, Issue 1: Spring / Summer 2022

Fickley-Baker, Jenn

Hinshaw, Andrew

Boulden, Jane

Peterson, Andrew C.

Pope, Dan

Massey, Gale

Coleman, Elizabeth

Price, J.L.

Smith, Jennifer J.

Short Stories & Anthologies

Ground

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Books by Coggins, Mark