FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Ashland, Or.  July12, 2009

 flyer | author's website | ashland mystery

 

Mark Coggins, Hard-Boiled Bits and Bytes

Mark Coggins, Author of the August Riordan Mysteries Published by Bleak House

 

Mystery author Mark Coggins, author of  RUNOFF (Bleak House, 2007) and four other mysteries featuring private investigator August Riordan will speak and sign at Bookwagon New and Used Books in Ashland on Friday Cover of Immortal Game, the First August Riordan MysteryAugust 14, 2009 at 6pm.

 

August Riordan is a jazz-loving, San Francisco investigator in the style of Hammett and Chandler. The writing is spare and clean with flashes of humor and familiar cultural icons. Coggins writes the classic hard-boiled, brought up-to-date with the bits and bytes of hacking, stolen software, web camsThe Big Wake-Up, the Fifth August Riordan Mystery due November 2009 from Bleak House and dot.com booms and busts. There’s a great cast of characters who run the streets that Coggins describes & photographs so well.

Four August Riordan mysteries have been published and the newest, THE BIG WAKE-UP, is due fall 2009 from Bleak House. Coggins' debut mystery, THE IMMORTAL GAME (1999) was a Penzler Pick and was nominated for a Shamus, Barry and IPPY.  VULTURE CAPITAL was published in 2002 and was recognized as a defining portrayal of the dark side of Silicon Valley.

 

"Sourpuss secretaries, predatory professors, greedy gurus, sanctimonious shrinks , a well-crafted cast of characters, led by a smart-stepping shamus."
—Kirkus Reviews

 

"Riordan rides again! Candy from Strangers is an inventive novel in the classic San Francisco private-eye tradition."
—Marcia  Muller“

 

 CNBC said of the book, "a truer picture of Silicon Valley can't be found," and Salon.com, "VULTURE CAPITAL gives us Northern California in the 21st century, as noir as it ever was." CANDY FROM STRANGERS was published in 2006 and RUNOFF in 2007 to equal acclaim.

Born in New Mexico in 1957, Mark Coggins earned two degrees and a Phi Beta Kappa Key from Stanford University. Coggins spent years in the dot.com trenches at Netscape, HP, VeriSign and several software startups before becoming a writer.

 

mysteries are my favorite...


The Ashland Mystery Readers Group also produces the cable access television show Ashland Mystery, rvtv noir, airing Wednesdays at 7:30 pm on Cable Channel 15 in Jackson and Josephine Counties and webcast at the same time from RogueTV.org. Now airing is the episode featuring Haila Williams, Acquisitions Editor for Blackstone Audiobooks in Ashland, Oregon, interviewed by Ed Battistella.

 

Ashland Mystery is sponsored in 2009 by Friends of the Ashland Public Library, Bookwagon New and Used Books, Standing Stone Brewing Company and Beverly&David Lively - The Party Place, and produced by the Ashland Mystery Readers Group. For more information contact Maureen Flanagan at 541-552-0743 or visit the group’s website  www.booksandoldlace.com/

 

 

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