Candy from Strangers - Softcover

Coggins, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1461046289 ISBN 13: 9781461046288

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2011

Synopsis

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 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 Facebook 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.

About this title

About the Author

Mark Coggins's work has been nominated for the Shamus and the Barry crime fiction awards and selected for best of the year lists compiled by the San Francisco Chronicle, the Detroit Free Press and Amazon.com, among others. His novels Runoff and The Big Wake-Up won the Next Generation Indie Book Award and the Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY) respectively, both in the crime fiction category. He lives in San Francisco with his wife Linda.

Review

"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."
--Michael Connelly, New York Times Best Selling Author

"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's] a hell of a read."
--Joe Gores, author of Spade and Archer

"[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."
--Publishers Weekly

"This third outing for Coggins's private investigator August Riordan proves him a worthy successor to the iconic Sam Spade... [A] volume that fits comfortably alongside those of Hammett and Chandler. Heartily recommended."
--Library Journal

"Crackling and whip smart ... Coggins' novel reincarnates the heady excesses of earlier chroniclers of debauchery in the Golden State, such as Roger L. Simon and Arthur Lyons."
--Mystery Scene Magazine

About this edition

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1461046289
• ISBN 13: 9781461046288
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352