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The Immortal Game |
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| The Immortal Game by Mark Coggins Poltroon Press 309 pages, 2000 ISBN 0918395186 Reviewed by Maria Y. Lima Nominated for the 2000 Shamus and Barry awards Missing that curmudgeonly PI found in such classics as Dashiell Hammett and Mickey Spillane? Look no further. August Riordan, bass-playing private investigator with an attitude, is on the case. His client, multi-millionaire Edwin Bishop, has hired him to find a highly advanced, proprietary chess software program that Bishop reports as stolen before release. What does this mean for Riordan? Nothing more than a wild ride through San Francisco's Silicon Valley, tracking source code, sleazy S & M aficionados, tracing the supposed culprit, a former "companion" of Bishop's, one Terry McCulloch. To help solve this puzzle, Riordan partners with a very unlikely sidekick, his counterpart in the gay world, wise guy Chris Duckworth. But the stakes get higher as Riordan digs deeper into the convoluted evidence. Did the source code for the game actually get stolen? When he tries to uncover the truth, Riordan finds his own life in danger. A nominee for the 2000 Shamus and Barry awards, The Immortal Game brings crisp writing and a clean style to the mystery genre. Although somewhat derivative of old television series in places, Coggins presents an eminently readable story for the 21st century. No Maltese Falcon here. Instead, the author substitutes the modern-day equivalent of a treasure - computer software. The characters of August Riordan and Chris Duckworth are more than cookie-cutter images - they actually seem to have a life beyond this particular tale. Coggins does an excellent job with this novel and shows off his ease with the English language. Recommended. |
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