August Riordan

When the world's most innovative computer chess software is stolen, wisecracking, jazz bass-playing PI August Riordan is hired to find it.Sifting through a San Francisco peopled with bruising, ex-NFL henchmen, transvestite techno geeks, and alluring, drug-addicted dominatrices, Riordan has got his work cut out for him.But with a smart-ass attitude like Riordan's, nothing is easy …A darkly comic sojourn through a town unrecognizable from the Tony Bennett song and the Rice-a-Roni ads, The Immortal Game is a Shamus, Barry, and Independent Publisher (IPPY) award nominee.

When Basis Ventures venture capitalist Ted Valmont is belatedly informed that the Chief Scientist of NeuroStimix-a biotech firm in which he has invested-is missing, it's not just business, it's personal. Not only is the scientist an old school chum, but his disappearance jeopardizes the development of NeuroStimix's most important product: a device intended to aid spinal cord injury victims. Since Valmont's twin brother, Tim, was paralyzed in a college diving accident, finding the scientist and getting him back into harness is of the utmost importance to both brothers.Valmont engages August Riordan to assist in the search and the men soon discover that the disappearance is part of a larger conspiracy to use NeuroStimix technology for perverse applications. Terrorism. Prostitution. Slave labor. These are just the beginning. And when a beautiful, mysterious young woman comes onto the scene, it's impossible to say whether the technology will provide the ultimate means to save them all or be the catalyst for tortuous, self-inflicted deaths…

The odyssey of María Eva Duarte de Perón-the Argentine first lady made famous in the play and the movie Evita-was as remarkable in death as it was in life. A few years after she succumbed to cervical cancer, her specially preserved body was taken by the military dictatorship that succeeded her deposed husband Juan. Hidden for sixteen years in Italy in a crypt under a false name, she was eventually exhumed and returned to Buenos Aires to be buried in an underground tomb said to be secure enough to withstand a nuclear attack.Or was she?When San Francisco private eye August Riordan engages in a flirtation with a beautiful university student from Buenos Aires, he witnesses her death in a tragic shooting and is drawn into mad hunt for Evita's remains. He needs all of his wits, his network of friends and associates, and an unexpected legacy from the dead father he has never known to help him survive the deadly intrigue between powerful Argentine movers and shakers, ex-military men, and a mysterious woman named Isis who is expert in ancient techniques of mummification.The fifth novel in the August Riordan series, The Big Wake-Up plunges everyman PI Riordan and his sidekick Chris Duckworth into their most terrifying and anguishing case ever.

Winnie doesn't remember the last time she felt anything below her neck. Her spine is severed at the seventh vertebrae, but thanks to implants from a sabotaged biomedical start-up, she has regained mobility. She is a prototype: a living, breathing-walking-demonstration of revolutionary technology that never made it to market.Her disability has become her armor. Because she doesn't register fatigue, she has trained relentlessly. Her hand, arm, and leg strength are off the scales for a woman, and she has honed self-defense techniques to channel that strength. She's a modern-day Amazon who feels no pain.When the sociopath who torpedoed the start-up sends killers to harvest the implants from her body, Winnie must team up with broken-down private investigator August Riordan to save both their lives-and derail sinister plans for perverse military applications of the technology.

Private investigator August Riordan returns to San Francisco to avenge the death of his friend and one-time partner, Chris Duckworth. Duckworth has taken over Riordan's old business, his old office and even his old apartment, and Riordan suspects Duckworth's death is linked to the missing person case he was working when he died.An alluring young woman named Angelina hired Duckworth to look for her half-sister, but what Riordan finds instead is a murderous polyamorous family intent on claiming a previously unknown manuscript from dead Beat writer Jack Kerouac.Following clues from Duckworth and a trail of mutilated bodies left by the family, Riordan soon realizes that avenging his partner will first involve recovering the manuscript-and then saving Angelina and himself from kidnap, torture and death. As the bodies pile up, Riordan must work with old allies and enemies to untangle Duckworth's last case before time runs out.