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"[D]eliciously quirky ... panache to spare." 320 pages | $24.95 (cloth) | $14.95 (paper) | add to cart |
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Runoff summary When her hand-picked mayoral candidate fails even to carry the predominantly Chinese precincts, Leonora Lee—the all-powerful “Dragon Lady” of San Francisco’s Chinatown—hires private eye August Riordan to investigate the possibility that someone has rigged the election by hacking the city’s newly installed touch-screen voting machines. As the days to the runoff election between the two remaining candidates click down, it becomes clear there are many groups with wildly different agendas that had a motive. An anarchist organization called Feral Collective and a radical, anti-gentrification group called Cuidad Verde (Green City) want the progressive Green party candidate to win because of his promise to increase affordable housing. Wo Hop To, a powerful gang in Chinatown with connections to a Hong Kong triad, want to sabotage the chances of the Dragon Lady’s candidate. “Downtown interests” with links to big business and real estate development want the relatively conservative Democratic candidate to maintain the business and development-friendly policies of the current administration. Did these factions act separately or work together? Did they suborn employees of the Election Department or the company that produced the electronic voting machines? These are the questions Riordan must answer, all while dealing with an entanglement with the Dragon Lady’s beautiful daughter, Lisa, who is the reigning Miss Chinatown. |
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Praise for Runoff "Runoff by Mark Coggins is a smart, funny, spooky ... often touching, always entertaining romp through ... San Francisco's highways, byways, and alleys of corruption. (Hammett eat your hat and laugh.) It's great fun and a must read." "[D]eliciously quirky ... panache to spare." "What could be better than a fun fiction about the real dangers of electronic voting? Coggins shows us that elections can be hacked and the cover-up can be murder." "Classic noir, brought bang up to date. August Riordan is a hero with a heart. You're with him every inch of the way as he stalks the mean streets of San Francisco's Chinatown, confronting crooked pols, anarchist squatters, psychopathic software engineers, and cleaver-wielding gangsters, with betrayal lurking around every corner. A wild ride." "Great PI novels are as hard to come by as honest elections, but Mark Coggins’ Runoff comes through in spades—Sam Spades, that is." "Street savvy and wit make August Riordan an appealing gumshoe in the San Francisco tradition. Runoff has my vote." |
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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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