Ashland Mystery: Mark Coggins, Hard-Boiled Bits and Bytes

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 August 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 cams and dot.com booms and busts.

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.

Coggins will also be at Barnes and Noble in Redding, California on Thursday August 13 at 6p and at the Klamath County Public Library on Friday August 14 at noon.

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/