Little Easter [Hardcover]

Reed Farrel Coleman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1993

Little Easter is a novel about the falls we take and the ways in which we recover…if we recover at all. Join Dylan Klein's forays into the clandestine worlds of the Mafia, New York's Diamond Exchange, and behind the police department's blue wall of silence. Meet the fallen and the tall.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Aspiring writer Dylan Klein is tending bar in a small town not far from New York City on a cold winter's night when an overly made up middle-aged woman comes in asking for Johnny Blue. There is no Johnny Blue, only a Johnny MacClough, a former cop who owns the bar. The woman departs. Klein finds a diamond necklace on the floor and traces high-heel marks in the snow to the woman's still-warm corpse, its mouth stuffed with a yellow bird. Coleman ( Life Goes Sleeping ) uses up his store of literary pretensions and opaque stylistic techniques at the start, but patient readers are rewarded with a somber and gripping crime story: Klein tracks down the dead woman's identity and her relationship with the tight-lipped MacClough; he unearths a few more stiffs, and he gets sordid and horizontal with a boozed-up woman journalist whose career is on its way down despite her fancy credentials. The graphic conclusion, as mob thugs surface with guns blazing, features the brief, memorable appearance of a gardening implement. A grim start and a grim finish mark this uneven but often satisfying story.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The meaning of Coleman's title, more symbolic and esoteric that you might expect, resides within a Forties-style text. Rough-hewn private eye Dylan Klein receives an enigmatic message for ex-cop John MacClough from a distraught woman but shortly thereafter finds the woman's freshly dead body--complete with canary in mouth. After confronting an evasive MacClough, Klein searches for clues among unscrupulous reporters, ruthless gangsters, and rapacious lawyers. Heartlessly succinct and often overstated prose jeopardize the plot. This is a marginal purchase.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 221 pages
• Publisher: Permanent Press (NY); First Edition edition (March 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1877946230
• ISBN-13: 978-1877946233
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,137,788 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Called a hard-boiled poet by NPR's Maureen Corrigan, Reed Farrel Coleman is the former executive vice president of Mystery Writers of America. He has published twelve novels in three series, and one stand-alone with award-winning Irish author Ken Bruen. His books have been translated into seven languages, and the Moe Prager character in his current series is one of the most engaging in crime fiction. "His bone-deep world weariness and mordant sense of humor should enthrall lovers of old-school, tough-talking, loner private eyes," says Booklist.

Reed is a three-time winner of the Shamus Award for Best Detective Novel of the Year. He has also received the Barry and Anthony Awards, and has been twice nominated for the Edgar® Award. He was the editor of the anthology Hard Boiled Brooklyn, and his short fiction and essays have appeared in Wall Street Noir, The Darker Mask, These Guns For Hire, Brooklyn Noir 3, Damn Near Dead, and other publications.

Reed is an adjunct professor at Hofstra University, teaching writing classes in mystery fiction and the novel.

His standalone novel, GUN CHURCH, is exclusive to Audible.com, and his seventh Moe Prager novel (HURT MACHINE) has been winning accolades from the likes of Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and others.