Bøger af Mark Coggins

Someone is trying to murder Japanese bar hostess Coco Ono. Tokyo's transphobic police won't investigate, so she turns to American private eye August Riordan. Riordan is a complete fish out of water in Japan-doesn't know the language, isn't on speaking terms with sushi, hasn't even traveled outside the US-but Coco has been told Riordan makes things happen. And happen they do: from the minute Riordan's size 12 Florsheims hit the ground in Tokyo, he is fending off attackers. Riordan and Coco are drawn into a conspiracy involving multiple yakuza clans, popular celebrities, and politicians at the very highest level of government. The bizarre crime they find at the center rattles the country's power structure and jeopardizes both their lives. A roiling chankonabe (sumo wrestler stew) of love hotels, cryptocurrency fraud, "soapland" brothels and the Japanese Adult Video industry, Geisha Confidential is an immersive exploration of a culture like no other and a must-read for fans of international crime fiction. Critical Acclaim for Geisha Confidential "Combine a beautiful trans bar hostess, a jet-lagged American PI, the yakuza, cryptocurrency trading, murder, Tokyo and stir. What you get is Coggins's masterful Geisha Confidential. A genius combination of a classic PI tale and the unique." -Reed Farrel Coleman, New York Times bestselling author of Sleepless City "Mark Coggins...outdoes himself with this tale of sexual shenanigans that range from the lowest soapland Tokyo brothels to the highest levels of Japanese government... [He] is a gifted artist whose award-winning photos of Tokyo settings enhance his witty, razor-sharp prose." -John Billheimer, Edgar Award-winning author of the Owen Allison and Lloyd Keaton series

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...

"How much does it cost to fix an election?" August Riordan-private investigator, jazz bass player, smart ass with a foolish heart-is going to find out. He's been hired by Leonora Lee, the all-powerful "Dragon Lady" of San Francisco's Chinatown, to investigate the results of the city's recent mayoral election. It seems the Dragon Lady's candidate failed to even carry the Chinese precincts, and she's convinced that someone must have rigged the outcome by hacking the city's newly installed touch-screen voting machines. A runoff between the two remaining candidates is days away, but it takes Riordan mere hours to find the Director of Elections dead in his office. A visit to the offices of Columbia Voting Systems-the suppliers of the city's touch-screen machines-results in another corpse. A wide range of political interests share a stake in the election, so Riordan's got plenty of suspects. But when the Dragon Lady's beautiful daughter is attacked after giving Riordan a goodnight kiss, it starts to get personal. Soon, Riordan is in a race not only against the runoff deadline, but against powerful political movers and shakers, Chinatown gang members, and crazed anarchists, with only his techno-savvy, cross-dressing friend Chris to help. The cost of fixing an election runs to as many lives as it does dollars, and if Riordan isn't careful, the price for un-fixing it may be more than he can afford ...

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.

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.

If Mark Coggins's life were a supermarket, the stories from Prom Night and other Man-made Disasters would be the aisle markers. Meander through the nostalgic, riotous, and sometimes cringe-inducing wares Coggins offers up in his version of Whole Fool. Whether he's staking out the house of his two-timing, belly-dancing girlfriend, deep sea diving with equipment fashioned from tire chains, a trash can and a garden hose, or donning an oversize waterfowl outfit to win the heart of the one who got away, Coggins writes with honesty, self-effacing humor and warmth.

The odyssey of María Eva Duarte de Perón--the Argentine first lady made famous in the play and the movie Evita--was as remarkable in death as it was in life. A few years after she succumbed to cervical cancer, her specially preserved body was taken by the military dictatorship that succeeded her deposed husband Juan. Hidden for sixteen years in Italy in a crypt under a false name, she was eventually exhumed and returned to Buenos Aires to be buried in an underground tomb said to be secure enough to withstand a nuclear attack.Or was she?When San Francisco private eye August Riordan engages in a flirtation with a beautiful university student from Buenos Aires, he witnesses her death in a tragic shooting and is drawn into mad hunt for Evita's remains. He needs all of his wits, his network of friends and associates, and an unexpected legacy from the dead father he has never known to help him survive the deadly intrigue between powerful Argentine movers and shakers, ex-military men, and a mysterious woman named Isis who is expert in ancient techniques of mummification.The fifth novel in the August Riordan series, The Big Wake-Up plunges everyman PI Riordan and his sidekick Chris Duckworth into their most terrifying and anguishing case ever.

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.

Winnie doesn't remember the last time she felt anything below her neck. Her spine is severed at the seventh vertebrae, but thanks to implants from a sabotaged biomedical start-up, she has regained mobility. She is a prototype: a living, breathing-walking-demonstration of revolutionary technology that never made it to market. Her disability has become her armor. Because she doesn't register fatigue, she has trained relentlessly. Her hand, arm, and leg strength are off the scales for a woman, and she has honed self-defense techniques to channel that strength. She's a modern-day Amazon who feels no pain. When the sociopath who torpedoed the start-up sends killers to harvest the implants from her body, Winnie must team up with broken-down private investigator August Riordan to save both their lives-and derail sinister plans for perverse military applications of the technology. Praise for books by Mark Coggins "A bang-bang thrill ride. Winnie is a female Jack Reacher." -Seth Harwood, author In Broad Daylight "Smart, stylish, sexy and amusingly insouciant...a panoramic tour de fource." -San Francisco Chronicle "Gritty...seamy...very, very funny. [Coggins] has given the form fresh life." -National Public Radio "Dry ice sarcasm...and plenty of nasty chuckles in route." -Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Coggins hauls on a dark, hip journey." -Detroit Free Press "Coggins writes tight prose with a clean, unadorned style; he is a Hammett for the turn of the 21st century." -Loren D. Estleman "Utterly entertaining" -Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine