Customer Reviews

Vulture Capital (August Riordan Mystery)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

An extradorinarily fine and distinctive mystery. Noir updated and downloaded. And a savage morality play.
Focused writing. And it has enough secrets that it is easy to be surprised, even when you think you're ahead of the plot.
A cliffhanger, too.
Fans of Coggins' first mystery will enjoy encountering the Riordan / Duckworth team from a different perspective.

Vulture Capital is a well executed, slightly twisted and weird, but completely believable story about the dark side of Silicon Valley's start-up community.

Venture Capitalist Ted Valmont is informed that the brains behind a biotechnology start-up he's funded called NeuroStimix is missing. Without the technology guru, NeuroStimix's future is in jeopardy just as a new product designed to aid spinal cord injury victims is about to come to market. Valmont engages PI August Riordan to help find the missing man and we soon learn that the disappearance is part of a larger conspiracy to use NeuroStimix technology for dastardly purposes. To complicate matters, the missing man is Valmont's buddy and Valmont's own brother, as a spinal injury patient, would benefit from the NeuroStimix discovery.

Co-founder of a failed Internet start-up, Mark Coggins injects lots of local color into his work. Technology-types and dot-com veterans will especially appreciate the Silicon Valley photos and clever quotes, which open each chapter. Settings and situations will be familiar to industry types, but the jargon is not overwhelming. The book is even dedicated to the Pets.com Sock Puppet.

VULTURE CAPITAL is the second in a series featuring August Riordan, a private eye we first met in Coggins' well-reviewed debut THE IMMORTAL GAME (2000). THE IMMORTAL GAME received extraordinary attention for a debut title from a very small press. It was chosen as a Penzler pick and nominated for a Shamus Award. This would only happen because the book was good. Expect similar praise for VULTURE CAPITAL. According to the excellent Vulture Capital Website... we can expect more titles to come in the Riordan series

I have read and enjoyed Mark Coggins' three more recent mystery novels that feature the August Riordan private eye character, and finally circled back to read this earlier book. Although Mr. Riordan is merely a hired hand of venture capitalist Ted Valmont in this caper, it's still a captivating and exciting page-turner.

In The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story (I think), Michael Lewis describes venture capitalists as ducks huddling together on Sand Hill Road. This image has stuck with me as I read news accounts of venture capitalists frequently chasing the same investment idea until it's beaten to death. In "Vulture Capital," Mark Coggins presents a more Machiavellian image of the venture capital industry; the beatings are ... a bit more than figurative. Anybody who enjoys a good detective yarn should pick this one up, even more so if you have some experience navigating Silicon Valley geography and it's personalities.

I really enjoyed this biotech thriller set in California's Silicon Valley. When a biotech scientist for a company on the verge of a groundbreaking discovery goes missing, Ted Valmont, the capital exec sponsoring the Biotech tries a little detective work. Like a modern day James Bond, Valmont manages wine tastings and lunches as well as getting himself into a lot of trouble as he uncovers a devious plan. The story moves along at a very nice pace and though this seems to be the second in a series but I had no trouble getting involved in this slightly disturbing look at the Biotech world. Now I have to go find book 1.

After letting it sit in my stack of unread books for 3 years, I dusted off Vulture Capital and am glad I did. While I now live on the East Coast, I spend 12 years in Silicon Valley and came in daily contact with several of the Ted Valmont and Larry Breens of the world. Mark captures their sense of self-importance extremely well, helping the reader to understand the basic psychy of the many 'internet tycoons' - a sense of having a license to do whatever they want to do simply because they are suddenly rich. He balances this by showing the downside of impetuous actions brought about by their human frailities.

While the technolology profiled in the book still borders on fiction, a well paced plot and well defined characters makes this an interesting, easy story to follow. It is just over the line from today's biotech reality.

But one question puzzles me....how did Coggins decide that Riordan, not Valmont would be the main character to base future books on? I'd love to see Coggins write a series with Ted as the hero and Riordan as a minor character, as in this book.

I give it three stars.

Witty and fast-paced, Vulture Capital is one fun read. Fans of The Immortal Game will be thrilled with the return of private eye August Riordan, and also the reappearance of his likeable sidekick Chris Duckworth. Newcomers and old fans alike will appreciate Coggins' vivid, stylish prose, well-developed plot line, complex characters, sparkling (and also very funny) dialogue, and the novel's San Francisco Bay Area locations depicted in the author's own photographs that introduce each chapter. I say "Hammet is a Coggins for the twentieth century."

I enjoyed the book a lot. The high tech backdrop for the story feels very realistic and provides numerous insights into how this high tech software development and funding works (or not).

The whodunit part of the mystery is very engaging and kept me turning pages rapidly. The reader gets many clues along the way, some obvious and some very subtle, but enough are false leads to keep you in suspense.

Action abounds as the main characters Valmont and Riordan careen around Silicon Valley and the Napa valley wine country. There is also plenty of humor from these two very different protagonists who share little in common except a very sharp and biting sense of humor.

I really enjoyed "The Immortal Game", and I've been waiting for more August Riordan. I found him in Vulture Capital, but I also found a very interesting Ted Valmont character. The concept of Venture Capitalist as hero caught me by suprise, but I loved it. Valmont and Riordan make a great team. I hope we don't have to wait long for their return.

When I read the first book about August Riordan, I thought I found my new hero. A tough guy, PI set in the modern world and a really good story. I could hardly put down the first book. Then I bought Vulture Capital. What a bore! I was more than half-way through the book before we ever saw Riordan. The book didn't even make him the main character. He was doing investigation stuff that we didn't even see or hear about until he was telling the client. I just found it hard to read. If I wanted to read about a venture capitalist, I would have bought one about a venture capitalist. I wanted a book about a private eye. I just hope the ones that follow are better.