Geisha Confidential

Someone is trying to murder Japanese bar hostess Coco Ono. Tokyo’s transphobic police won’t investigate, so she turns to American private eye August Riordan. Riordan is a complete fish out of water in Japan—doesn’t know the language, isn’t on speaking terms with sushi, hasn’t even traveled outside the US—but Coco has been told Riordan makes things happen.

And happen they do: from the minute Riordan’s size 12 Florsheims hit the ground in Tokyo, he is fending off attackers. Riordan and Coco are drawn into a conspiracy involving multiple yakuza clans, popular celebrities, and politicians at the very highest level of government. The bizarre crime they find at the center rattles the country’s power structure and jeopardizes both their lives.

A roiling chankonabe (sumo wrestler stew) of love hotels, cryptocurrency fraud, “soapland” brothels and the Japanese Adult Video industry, Geisha Confidential is an immersive exploration of a culture like no other and a must-read for fans of international crime fiction.

Keywords: hardboiled, thriller, noir, private eye, Japan

Born in the Four Corners region of New Mexico, Mark Coggins is an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation. He earned two degrees and a Phi Beta Kappa Key from Stanford University and has worked for several Silicon Valley computer and venture capital firms, including Netscape Communications and Hewlett Packard Company.

While at Stanford, he studied literature and creative writing with Tobias Wolff, N. Scott Momaday and Ron Hansen and wrote the first story featuring his series character August Riordan in a class taught by Hansen. This story, “There’s No Such Thing as Private Eyes,” was later published in The New Black Mask, vol. 4, Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich.

His books have been nominated for the Shamus and the Barry crime fiction awards and have been 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. The Immortal Game was optioned for a film.