Onion Street by Reed Farrel Coleman

If you’re a Moe Prager fan, you’ll know that in the last book he found out he has cancer. In his latest, Onion Street, his daughter, concerned about him, is visiting and asks why he became a cop. That’s the end of the present day. He then begins a long story leading up to his applying to the police academy. The story includes bombs, drug smuggling, beatings, drives through Brooklyn and more.

Reed Farrel Coleman’s books are always a good read and this is no exception, once you get past the implausibility of the situations Moe, as a college student, gets into and the actions that he takes. No college student I know or knew back in the day would do any of the things he did, let alone all of the things he did.  But then again, I grew up in Queens, which although geographically close, psychologically is a long way from Brooklyn. Maybe they did things differently there.

Anyway, as I said, once you get past this, it’s a fun read. Coleman brings up locales and TV shows from the period. Some of them are vivid. Any of you who routinely took the Belt Parkway past the garbage dumps can, even now, visualize and actually smell the noxious fumes. The rumble of the elevated trains never leaves you. The book brought back memories of me and my grandparents walking in Brighton Beach, getting Mrs. Stahl’s knishes, the shadow of the El darkening the street.

So, now that I think about it, Onion Street was more a walk down memory lane for me than a believable mystery. But, so what! I really enjoyed it. That’s what counts.

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Hurt Machine by Reed Farrel Coleman

In seven books, Reed Farrel Coleman has taken Moe Prager from the 1970s to present day, aging him from his 20s to his 60s. Many authors having taken many more books to age their protagonists less. Yet, this series is still cohesive and readers don’t feel like they’ve missed anything.

Hurt Machine takes place two years after Innocent Monster. It begins with Moe emerging from his oncologist’s office. The news is not good. He’s outside a restaurant where a local reception dinner is being held for his daughter’s upcoming wedding, several weeks away in Vermont, when he sees his estranged ex-wife/ex-PI partner, Carmella. Her sister, Alta, has been murdered and she pleads for his help in finding the killer. She assumes it relates to an incident in which Alta and her on the job partner, Maya, EMTs, refused to help a restaurant patron who was having a heart attack.

Of course there’s more underlying the brutal murder and maybe more astute readers would see the ending earlier in the book than I did, but I didn’t see it coming. There are enough twists and turns and misdirections to delight even the most stubborn mystery reader.

But it’s Moe that steals the show. Always philosophical, he’s even more so as he contemplates illness and possible death, the shortness of life. This book is all Moe. Our favorite characters make fleeting if any appearances: Israel Roth, Sarah, Carmella (maybe because many of them have died and not been replaced by new favorites). However, Coleman has brought in an intriguing new character, Detective Fugua (a new series in the making if I were Reed Farrel Coleman….hint, hint, Reed!).

Coleman has said that he’s working on a prequel and possibly a ninth book. While there are certain detectives whose authors should send them out while they’re on top (Mr. Connelly, it’s time to retire Harry Bosch and Robert Parker should have retired Spenser years ago, really), I personally am not ready to see Moe Prager drift off into the sunset.

So, as I’ve said before…treat yourself. Start with Walking the Perfect Square and read the series through to Hurt Machine. You too will have a new favorite gumshoe.

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Empty Ever After by Reed Farrel Coleman

“Mary White smelled of sweet perfume and mixed feelings when she greeted me at the door of her house,” Moe Prager says upon meeting up with an old acquaintance. “Kites bathed in dying orange light flirted with the Verrazano Bridge and dreamed of untethered flight,” he thinks as he drives along the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn as the sun is setting.

I’m making my way through the Moe Prager mysteries by Reed Farrel Coleman (I just finished Empty Ever After) because his latest one, Hurt Machine, just recently published, got great reviews. One more to go! Yes! And while I wouldn’t say the series falls into the “Literary” genre, they are literary, as evidenced by the snippets above. Coleman, in the form of Moe Prager, is practical, philosophical, literary and literate.

Prager’s also human. I have a lot of favorite mystery characters: Harry Bosch by Connelly, Kinsey Milhone by Grafton, Joe Gunther by Mayer, Jackson Brody by Atkinson, Mike Daley by Silverstein and, more recently, Claire DeWitt by Gran.  (By the way, if you haven’t read Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead, you must. That’s an order.) However, the only one I can visualize as a next door neighbor is Moe Prager.

There’s a 15 year gap in Moe Prager’s life between the previous installment and Empty Ever After. (In a recent interview Coleman said, unlike Sue Grafton’s protagonist, he, Coleman, must age his characters in order to keep it interesting.)  Empty Ever After incorporates the cases of the previous books, making it both a benefit and a hindrance.  If you’re familiar with the cases/books, you may or may not want to rehash parts of them again.  On the other hand, it all fits together nicely. If you’re not familiar with the previous books, you may get a tad lost, but Coleman does a good job of acquainting you with the salient points.

For purposes of this blog post, the plot is too involved to summarize without the backstory. Suffice it to say, Coleman makes it work. For a quick, enjoyable read, Moe Prager is a #1 recommendation.

Coleman also said that he plans two more Prager books, a prequel and another book. You know I’ll be waiting impatiently for these to be written.

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Reed Farrel Coleman

Whenever we go to a new city, we always seek out the independent bookstores.  I especially look for the mystery bookstores and have come to ask the same question of each one:  what are some must read mysteries?  Thanks to the great saleman at Mystery on Main Street in Brattleboro, VT, I have now become a Moe Prager fan, whose mysteries are written by Reed Farrel Coleman (who looks like a private eye).  When I read that Coleman is coming out with a new book, I knew I had to catch up with the 5 or 6 books in the series (I’d only read two.)

There are some mysteries that are action packed and some that are riveting courtroom dramas.  But there are few where you get to know the characters, where there is a life outside of crime.  Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series is one that comes to mind and Moe Prager is another.  Moe is an everyday guy.  He lives in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn.  He was disabled while on the NYPD force due to a freak accident and was retired.  He owns a wine store with his brother Aaron and keeps his private detective license in case a case comes up.  His claim to fame was finding a missing girl when no one else could and this keeps haunting him because missing person cases seem to keep coming his way.

In The James Deans, when Moe and his wife, Katy, are invited to the posh wedding of a former wine store employee, he wonders why.  He soon finds out.  Her well heeled father, Thomas Geary, wants Prager to find out what happened to Moira Heaton, an intern in State Senator Steve Brightman’s office.  She left one day about a year ago and never returned.  All eyes turn to Brightman.  Of course a detective agency was hired, with no results.  So Geary turns to Prager to clear Brightman’s name so he can resume his meteoric rise in politics.  Prager finds out what happens to Moira and more.

Moe Prager is a truly likeable guy.  He’s smart, philosophical, realistic and caring.  Coleman’s writing is readable, enjoyable  and unpretentious.  His plots are realistic.  There are some slimeballs, some nice guys and some characters to be pitied in Moe Prager’s life.

While you don’t have to read the series in order, I’d do it since there aren’t too many books to catch up on and they’re fast reads.  I’d probably pick up a nice bottle of wine to get in the mood, kick back and relax.   Let me know what you think.

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