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"Coggins's private investigator August Riordan proves a worthy successor to the iconic Sam Spade... [A] volume that fits comfortably alongside those of Hammett and Chandler. Heartily recommended." 320 pages | Add to Cart
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Candy from Strangers summary 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 web diaries (aka 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 MySpace.com 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. |
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Praise for Candy from Strangers "I've been waiting a long time for a fresh look at the private eye story. Mark Coggins has delivered it here ... It’s original, its smart and it was good to the last page." "[A] gripping ... hard-boiled exploit... Riordan's street smarts and witty asides will make him a familiar—and welcome—figure to fans of Robert Parker's Boston PI, Spenser." "This third outing for Coggins's private investigator August Riordan proves him a worthy "A mystery that puts on paper the problems modern society has with a need for instant gratification and a social structure more and more based on computer screens and keyboards. Coggins makes human and real what is to many just a story in the news. And he does it with humor, skill and depth." "Coggins recreates the private eye novel from scratch, breathing new life into it, standing every cliche of the genre on its ear. In turn fall-down funny, then dark and brooding, [it] ends up being a sly examination of all that's wrong—and right—with today's youth- "Yes, [this] is a fun, enjoyable, droll and snappy page-turner—but it’s more than that, too. This little gem of a book has a very human heart, revealing a keen understanding not just of how and why young girls go missing, but how and why all of us keep missing each other." |
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Mark Coggins lives in San Francisco. Writes the August Riordan mystery series, including the novels Immortal Game, Vulture Capital, and Candy from Strangers. The next novel in the series, Runoff, will be published by Bleak House Books in the fall of 2007. |
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