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The Big Wake Up (August Riordan Series)
 
 
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The Big Wake Up (August Riordan Series) [Hardcover]

Mark Coggins (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)

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Book Description

August Riordan Series November 1, 2009
The odyssey of Eva Peron--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.


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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Coggins's outstanding fifth mystery to feature San Francisco PI August Riordan (after 2007's Runoff) successfully blends an over-the-top premise with an unrelentingly grim plot. Soon after flirting with an attractive young woman in a Laundromat, Riordan watches in horror as an apparently deranged cable car operator guns her and an older woman down at a cable car stop. Riordan pursues the killer and stops his bloody rampage. The Argentine family of the first victim, 23-year-old Araceli Rivero, hires him to investigate an unrelated matter, the location of Araceli's dead aunt, whose body was transferred from a Milan cemetery to somewhere in the Bay Area. After quickly getting a promising lead, Riordan learns that his clients have been less than straight with him—the missing corpse is actually that of Evita Perón. Coggins pulls no punches as the suspenseful action builds to a violent act of vigilantism. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

PI August Riordan is back for his fifth outing (following Runoff, 2007). This time the hard-boiled, wisecracking San Franciscan finds himself enmeshed in the Evita Perón mythos. Coggins extrapolates that Evita’s body, actually stolen and moved several times, isn’t really in the Argentine tomb claimed by the government as her final resting place. A run-in with a machine-gun-toting cable-car brakeman launches Riordan on a guided tour through the cemeteries of San Francisco, hunting for Evita’s perfectly preserved corpse. Riordan’s deadly cat-and-mouse game involves surviving both the murderous intentions of members of Argentina’s ruling class and the seductive advances of some beautiful Latin American women. First-person narrative, first-class yarn. --Elliott Swanson

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 271 pages
  • Publisher: Bleak House Books (November 1, 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1606480553
  • ISBN-13: 978-1606480557
  • Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,865,152 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mark Coggins studied creative writing with Tobias Wolff and Ron Hansen at Stanford University 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, a revival of Black Mask, the famous pulp magazine that thrived in the 30s and 40s.

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.

Two of his novels have been translated for foreign markets. RUNOFF won the Next Generation Indie Book Award in the Mystery/Suspense category, THE BIG WAKE-UP won the Independent Publisher Book Award in the Mystery/Suspense/Thriller category and THE IMMORTAL GAME was optioned for a film. His work has been collected for the California History Room by the California State Library and the San Francisco History Center by the San Francisco Public Library.

Mark lives in San Francisco with his wife Linda and their cat Taki.

 

Customer Reviews

8 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
5.0 out of 5 stars (8 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A wild ride, November 1, 2009
This review is from: The Big Wake Up (August Riordan Series) (Hardcover)
Another suspenseful and funny mystery from Mark Coggins. The adventure begins when San Francisco private eye August Riordan witnesses a murderous rampage that couldn't happen in any other city. This event draws him into a search for an important body that is coveted by a collection of mysterious (and at times ruthless) South Americans. Along the way, this private eye had me laughing out loud with one sarcastic remark after another. An entertaining page turner, no question about it.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Best of the series, November 27, 2009
By 
Martin R. Cagan "martyc55" (Saratoga, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
I've read his full series and this book is the best yet. The story is terrific and if you like this gum-shoe detective genre like I do you won't be able to put it down.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Coggins' best yet, December 21, 2009
By 
GTP (The Milky Way Galaxy) - See all my reviews
I've read all of Coggins' novels, and this is his best yet. Wild, funny, sharp-witted and full of action action action. As usual, Coggins populates his story with clearly-drawn characters you can't forget - from his sarcastic gumshoe hero to a chilling Egyptian embalming expert to a drag queen who appears in drag in a way you've never seen a queen appear in drag before. This is one funny, heartfelt, turbo-charged ride of a book.
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