Runoff

Publishers Weekly

How much does it cost to fix an election? That's the question uppermost in PI August Riordan's mind in his harrowing fourth adventure (after 2006's Candy from Strangers). Leonora Lee, the notorious, near-mythic "Dragon Lady" of San Francisco's Chinatown, hires Riordan to look into the city's mayoral election after her candidate, Alan Chow, finishes in single digits. Lee suspects someone has been tampering with newly installed touch-screen voting machines. Riordan has until the runoff election, less than a week away, to find the answers. But more than political shenanigans are on hand: the director of elections is found dead in his office, and Riordan soon runs up against Chinatown gang members as well as powerful forces committed to preserving the political status quo. Firmly entrenched in the classic private eye mold of Hammett and Chandler, Coggins exposes the dark underbelly of American politics, but doesn't stoop to political correctness or mindless carnage. (Nov.)

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Kirkus Reviews

A wisecracking sleuth investigates alleged election fraud in San Francisco. With his eye firmly on a $10,000 reward offered by the Bay Area Bankers Association for information on a recent spate of ATM robberies, August Riordan tangles with a backhoe, the thieves' tool and sometime getaway vehicle, causing major damage to the art gallery of Leonora Lee, the Dragon Lady of Chinatown. Unexpectedly, she hires Riordan to dig up the dirt on new touch-screen voting machines, which she believes have been used to defraud voters and deny her chosen candidate the mayoralty. Shortly after a tense phone exchange with Department of Elections director Jerry Bowman, Riordan visits the bureaucrat and finds him dead, a letter opener jammed into his neck. Helped by snappy secretary Gretchen and part-time sidekick Chris Duckworth, techie and drag performer, Riordan proceeds to shake up the local political establishment. Kathleen Wilmott of the Green Party is surprisingly belligerent, but Riordan doesn't do much better with candidate Alan Chow, the Winston Churchill of Chinatown. During a contentious interview, Chow discovers a bomb, and the two men barely escape the imminent explosion. Death threats, more murders and an assault on Leonora's daughter, whom Riordan has begun to date, thicken the plot. Riordan's fourth caper (Candy from Strangers, 2006, etc.) has a deliciously quirky stable of irregulars and panache to spare.

Booklist Booklist

A wisecracking, hard-boiled private-eye yarn ... Not only is the writing snappy in this fourth appearance of PI and jazz musician August Riordan but the story is as full of twists and turns as its setting, San Francisco's Chinatown. While echoing Chandler and Hammett, Coggins advances the genre into the Internet era.

James Crumley

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.

Kirkus Reviews

[D]eliciously quirky ... panache to spare.

Publishers Weekly

[H]arrowing ... exposes the dark underbelly of American politics.

Staff Reviewer

[D]eliciously quirky ... panache to spare.

Stephen Miller

Riordan and his creator ... represent the new, 21st-century breed of writers and characters. 'What’s happening with the private eye novel?' is a perpetually popular question among the crime-fiction cognoscenti. Runoff is the answer. To borrow a description from the jazz magazine Downbeat, Coggins is Talent Deserving Wider Recognition.