The Return of Moe Prager

If you scroll down to item 8 on this news dump from Tyrus books, you'll get a surprise. It looks like Reed Farrell Coleman is bringing Moe Prager back this year. I'm not sure where Coleman is going with this, since Empty Ever After felt like the natural end of Prager's story to me. Coleman did a superb job with the long, overarching story arc in the first five novels, and now that it's all been cleared up (well cleared up is probably not the term for it, but then neither is resolved), I'm not sure where he's going to take the story now.

The James Deans resissued

Busted Flush Press has reissued Reed Farrel Coleman's The James Deans, a novel that won Shamus, Barry and Anthony awards, received boatloads of critical praise and then disappeared without much notice by the wider world. The reissue alone is nice, but David Thompson has added some bang for the buck, including two short stories featuring Moe Prager, a foreward by Michael Connelly, an afterword by Coleman and an excerpt from the forthcoming Coleman/ Ken Bruen collaboration Tower. If you're going to reissue a book, this is how you do it.

Review of The Fourth Victim

Reed Farrell Coleman’s latest effort, The Fourth Victim, (Bleak House, 2008) published under his pseudonym Tony Spinosa, is an excellent novel and a good example of why Coleman may always be a cult figure, relegated to an artistic life of critical acclaim without commercial success.

The Fourth Victim picks up with his odd couple of Joe Serpe and Bob Healy, former NYPD detectives, investigating the murder and robbery of another former cop, who also happens to share a second career in home heating oil delivery with the two protagonists. The dead cop, named Rusty Monaco, happens to be the fourth victim in a string of robbery/murders of oil delivery men, and he also saved Serpe’s life once on the job. Serpe feels honor bound to look into the death and Healy feels honor bound to help Serpe.

Serpe and Healy have a strained relationship because Healy was the internal affairs investigator responsible for ending Serpe’s career. Serpe was a hot shot rule bending narc, while Healy was a law and order watcher of the watchmen. Reunited by chance years later, the two men teamed up to solve a murder in Hose Monkey, the first Tony Spinosa novel, and in the second book they are business partners and friends, although it is an uneasy friendship. Coleman’s starting point is a conventional one. Odd couplings are the stuff of Hollywood thrillers. Ask Mel Gibson and Danny Glover or Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy. Two people with different personalities come together. After some friction the two quit bickering long enough to fight a bad guy and learn something about themselves and each other in the process. It's trite, but Coleman, if he followed this well worn path, could have a bestselling series on his hands. He's a talented writer and his plots will stand up with the best of them.

Coleman rejects the easy route, however. While The Fourth Victim is firmly rooted in the tropes of the crime genre, Coleman refuses to give into the genre’s worst tendencies, which include glorifying violence and pat solutions to complex problems. In Coleman’s world murder begets murder and even good men end up being party to bad acts in the pursuit of justice. No one gets away clean, and redemption comes in small measures. Serpe and Healy do find out who killed their fellow cop, but there is no bullet filled climax. There are no witty one liners. There is no sneering bad guy who stops a well deserved slug with his face. There is no grand criminal conspiracy. There is just another body to be buried.

Podcasts

Check it out. Clute and Edwards interview Reed Farrel Coleman over at Behind the Black Mask, and Bleak House has jumped into the podcasting game as well, with an interview with Evan Kilgore.

Review of Soul Patch

Secrets. They bind people who want nothing to do with each other together. They drive people who need each other apart. They bring uncertainty and guilt with each new day and, in the end, they are always impossible to keep.

In Soul Patch, (Bleak House, 2007) Reed Farrel Coleman’s follow up to the critically acclaimed The James Deans, private-eye cum wine merchant Moe Prager finds himself swallowed by secrets. He is haunted by the knowledge that he let his wife’s older brother slip away from him years ago when he had been hired to find him. Moe and his father-in-law, the only other person who knows, are engaged in a contest of wills, to see who breaks first.

While Moe is preoccupied with this secret, which threatens his marriage, his old friend, Larry McDonald, NYPD’s chief of detectives, comes around with a tape and asks Moe to listen to it. Moe does. It’s an illicit recording of a small time drug suspect offering to talk about the murder of a real drug kingpin who died years ago. Moe doesn’t get it, and when McDonald asks Moe to help try and cover up the fact that some old cops were the dead kingpin’s payroll back in the day Moe refuses. When McDonald turns up dead of an apparent suicide Moe no longer has the option of saying no. An offer of information regarding his long missing brother-in-law from Queens District Attorney Richard Fishbein, makes sure he stays motivated.

Coleman brings a depth of feeling to his PI that is often missing in the genre. Moe is a complex character pulled in many different directions by conflicting emotions. Boredom, loyalty, fear, anger and regret all combine in Moe’s breast to drive him forward. He is a different breed than fictional investigators like Lew Archer, or Philip Marlowe, who are largely absent from their own stories. Moe is tortured, but not in the clichéd drunken private investigator way. He’s made some mistakes and had some bad luck, but he’s a family man, not a brooding loner, whose comfort is found at the bottom of a bottle. He is deeply concerned about how his actions, and the secrets he is dredging up, will affect those around him.

Coleman has written a fine, elegiac novel, brimming with regret and sadness. Moe is a melancholy man and he is surrounded by a melancholy Brooklyn; a place Coleman knows so well it is more of a character than a setting. It is also a subject which brings out Coleman’s eloquent side. For Coleman,

“Coney Island is a dirty, dark-hearted place, a place that once was and no longer is. Rain washes nothing but the good away in Coney Island. And when the rain drives the visitors back to their cars and subways, they take their happy memories with them. In their wake, only the truth of the place remains; the moldering garbage, the rusted and crumbling rides, empty arcades and sideshow spielers pitching their rigged games to a crush of absent hordes.”

It is writing like that which keeps Soul Patch from being just another private eye story.

Coleman’s novel is more character driven than plot driven, which is fortunate, since his plot in this outing is predictable. There are no last minute surprises, but that’s all right. Readers will come for the mystery, but stay for the company.

The Reed Farrel Coleman Update and some thoughts on book reviewing

Reed Farrel Coleman's follow up to The James Deans is out this month. One of the most striking things about the new novel, Soul Patch, is the way Coleman evokes a sense of place, and the latest issue of The Big Thrill Webzine, has an article from Coleman on Coney Island.

This article is a prime example of why I usually publish my reviews early. I finished my review of Soul Patch a couple of weeks ago, but I've been sitting on it, planning to release it when the book came out. This morning I boot up the computer and read this article, where, among other things, Coleman talks about how he wanted to make Coney Island more of a character in the book than just a setting. Well, this is a point I made in the review. Now, this means that Coleman was entirely successful, because I got it. I still cringe, however, because I hate the thought of anyone thinking that I take points for my reviews from anyone else-especially an author. I make it a point not to read anything about a book I plan to review until my review is done. A reviewer has a responsibility to give their impressions about the book, and only the book.
I was planning to start April off with my review of Hard Man, but I published that review early, because I knew I would break down and listen to Guthrie's interview at Behind the Black Mask. I really wrestled with what to write about Hard Man, and I knew that listening to the author talk about it would likely change my impressions of the book, and, in fact, my impressions of the book have changed a little. After I published the review, the author contacted me (to thank me, not to complain), and we ended up discussing the book. That discussion has changed my perspective somewhat, but I still stand by my review, and the criticisms I leveled, because those were my initial, honest impressions, and that is what a book review should be.

Video prologue to Reed Farrel Coleman's new novel

Reed Farrel Coleman's new novel, Soul Patch, comes out in April. It is the sequel to the much praised The James Deans, which I'm ashamed to say I haven't yet read. Coleman has a video prologue for the new book here.