To begin with, the chapter-starting photos gave the book a somewhat juvenille pulp fiction-feel and seemed to lower the level of writing a bit. Nowadays, you can find copies at much lower prices, but the Poltroon edition still represents a well-praised first novel with a unique design, issued in a relatively small edition. Mark Coggins' 'The Immortal Game' is a well-written, albeit monotone, mystery that suffers several mortal wounds that keep it from being the timeless classic it strives to be.

Mark Coggins has 16 books on Goodreads with 861 ratings. The blurb from Estleman, in particular, was very generous, comparing Mark’s writing to Dashiell Hammett’s and also making the connection of the chess background in the story to Raymond Chandler (and Philip Marlowe), which is what Mark hoped readers would do.Īt one time, pristine, signed copies of the first edition of Immortal were going for as much as $200, a point which Lev Raphael alludes to on his NPR review of the book. Mark Coggins’s most popular book is The Immortal Game: A San Francisco Chronicle Book of the Yea. The book was blurbed on the back cover by three authors: Tony Hillerman, Loren D. Born: 1957 New Mexico, United States: Occupation: Author: Language: English: Nationality. Johnson used a simple arrangement of the title and author credit in Cooper Black typeface over the photograph, replacing the dot for the “i” of immortal for the first word of the title (“the”). The knight is intended to symbolize Riordan and the bishop is a stand-in for Edwin Bishop, Riordan’s client in the book. The cover photograph of two Lewis chessmen–a knight and a bishop–was also taken by Mark. Mark used a Sinar Norma view camera to take all of the pictures in the book with the exception of two: a photograph taken inside a gun range, and a picture of the display window of a bondage and discipline paraphernalia store.

The Immortal Game by Mark Coggins