Customer Reviews

Soul Patch (Moe Prager Mysteries)

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

 

 

A lot of authors have been touted as the second coming of Dashiel Hammett, but Coleman comes closest for me. He has all the grit of Hammett, but has the personally developed main character that Crais and Coburn do so well.

Moe Prager is an ex-cop turned wine salesman who would much rather be detecting than sipping and selling. When an old "friend" comes for help, bodies start turning up and his may be next. The plot is a good one with enough uncertainty throughout to keep the pages turning.

It is the characters that sets this book apart. Moe is rich and believeable. His observations (the book is written in the first person) about other characters in the book resonate with believability. We have all known people just like the characters in this mystery.

The setting is Brooklyn in the late 1980's and Coleman captures the tone of that decade well.

Frankly, I do not understand why Coleman is not a best-selling author. He is a winner of the Shamus Award and other prizes for his predecessor book, "The James Deans". This was my first Coleman/Moe Praeger book, but I'm going back to the bookstore for his others. This is highly recommended.

This is the first Moe Prager book I've read, and I love the spare but gritty prose Mr. Coleman uses. I liked Moe from the beginning, and his apparent marital problems set up the possibility that an attractive detective he ends up working with will turn his head a bit further than appropriate.

I'm not familiar with Brooklyn, but I liked the feel of the place where the book is set. There are enough twists and turns in the story to keep people busy guessing what's next, and toward the end, when I thought I had an idea what might be coming, I so wanted it to be true.

I own two other of Mr. Coleman's books and they have been moved way up on my stack of books waiting to be read. The soul of a poet shimmers in this book, and that's very good for those of us who read it.

Not to diminish Coleman's earlier work -- they've all been great all the way back to his first, Dylan Klein novel, 'Life Goes Sleeping' from 1991 -- but he's really hit his stride with 'Soul Patch'. The plotting and twists are creative and non-stop, and his characters are completely alive and ones you care about -- though not always favorably. Moe Prager's empathy with some of the biggest losers is offset by his disdain for many of the other respectable and powerful. Moe himself is one the reader really comes to care about, and I can't wait for his next appearance. This fourth entry in the Moe Prager series is outstanding, dark and gritty and everything one could hope for from a crime novel. There are numerous references to plots of the previous three in the series, but that shouldn't deter you from reading this as a starting point. I'll be surprised if there's a better crime novel this year. Reed Farrel Coleman is as good as it gets! We'll be hearing a lot more from him.

A book that comes with near perfect reviews and major award nominations raises expectations, and perhaps in this case, raises those expectations too high. I would rate this book at 3 and 1/2 stars out of 5. I found the characterization of the protagonist a little uneven, but that wasn't really as much a problem for me as the characterization of the dead Chief of Detectives -- dead, his character outlined and emphasized over and over, and yet at the end of the book the reader is expected to buy into a major swing in that characterization. That was tough for me to buy. Also there is a ponderous quality to the prose, to the way in which the author describes every venue, that though it may lend atmosphere it also bogs down the pacing. And yet with all that description -- maybe there were just too many places with too much history related -- New York still did not fascinate me in the same way that Crais manages to do for LA or Sandford for Minneapolis.

My biggest grievance -- and I am shocked that no one has mentioned this so far -- is with the complete lack of proofreading for this manuscript. I know some people like to blame the occasional error on the printer, but the number of misspellings, typos, duplicated words, missing words -- I all but lost patience trying to keep my head in the story and not let those things distract. It was clear that not even an electronic spell-checker was used. For years I have complained about John Sandford's books in this regard, but not all of his books together contain as many mistakes as this book holds. Bleak House Publishing has had some good press lately, but apparently not from people who've had to read their shoddily produced books.

In summary, I thought this was a pretty good book, not a great one. I'll read books by this author again.

This mystery starts slow because it's incredibly complicated with multiple plotlines stretching 25 years or more into the past - but the worldweary, self-mocking tone of the narrator helps keep it together. Moe Prager helps run a chain of wine shops with his brother, but he's always dreamed of being a detective on the NYPD. He's probably pushing fifty now, but in his 20s, he served as a uniform cop with the NYPD, even though he as a wise-cracking Jewish intellectual was a bit of an outsider among all those Irish cops. Then his knee got wrecked, and life had its way of moving on without him. Now he's in a failing marriage, and bored with his life. He dabbles in being a private investigator. A old crime from the past resurfaces involving possible police corruption and the murder of a drug lord from the 1970s. Moe has one last chance to get on the case. This novel is remarkable for its movie-clarity perfection in bringing New York City to life. Plus Moe is a complicated and fascinating person.

Moe Prager turns in his NYPD detective's badge to open a wine store with his brother. He does it as a favor to his wife and daughter, and maybe to himself. He wants to lead a normal life and enjoy regular hours, more money and less stress. His deal with his brother is that if something interesting comes along or a friend needs his help, he can do a little private eyeing on the side. Not that this happens very often --- maybe once or twice a year --- but it's good to be able to help out old friends.

Sometimes, showing up for work everyday to fill out orders and take the money to the bank gets kind of dull. His deal with his wife is another thing, and the change in careers isn't having the results on a shaky marriage they both had hoped for. Maybe predictable isn't all it's cracked up to be.

The wine store business is so good that Moe and his brother are holding a grand opening for their third shop. Larry McDonald, his old pal from Precinct 6-0, shows up for the festivities. Moe is glad to see that Larry is now Chief of Detectives with the NYPD, though Larry is there for business purposes rather than to party. Larry pulls Moe into a side room, presses a tape recording into his hand and asks him to listen to it. Then he disappears.

What Moe hears on the tape --- the questioning of a low-level drug dealer by two cops --- will lead to digging up, quite literally, a cold case in a murder committed under the Coney Island boardwalk over 20 years ago. The unsolved killing of an informant may involve too many people in Moe and Larry's circle of past friends and colleagues. It will turn deadly for some who are still around.

SOUL PATCH is a classic hard-boiled detective drama containing crisp, often amusing observances and sardonic delivery with echoes of Dashiell Hammett. The story moves briskly from crime to denouement, passing through a colorful panorama of locations, subplots and flashbacks without the author's clearly-defined characters ever breaking stride.

Every once in a while a writer comes along who makes the mystery fan sit up and take notice. Reed Farrel Coleman is the past winner of several coveted mystery awards --- including the Shamus, Barry and Anthony awards --- who has honed his writing style and plotting skills to a sharp edge. Maybe you've already read the previous three books in the Moe Prager series. I hadn't. In fact I had never even heard of them, but they're on order now. Give me more Moe!

--- Reviewed by Roz Shea

...you're going to love Reed Coleman's Moe Praeger series. Perhaps more than any other contemporary author, Coleman's believes as did Faulkner that "The past is never dead. It isn't even past."

Praeger once again in this fourth in the acclaimed series gets involved with the case of an old friend that tosses up more confusion than a House of Mirrors. In this case, the death of an old friend and how this ties back to a long forgotten murder case on Coney Island in the 1970's.

Coleman is at a disadvantage here in that he has to follow his excellent The James Deans, which really raised the performance bar. I enjoyed this book almost as much , but the repetition of some of the Praeger family tensions for a fourth time is getting old. Coleman needs to find some new things to push Praeger forward.

As usual, the sense of place is well drawn and his characters (mostly) deserve our sympathy. However, the series is getting a bit long in the tooth.

This novel is the fourth in the series whose protagonist is Moe Prager, a former New York City cop, prematurely retired due to injury, who misses the life. In this installment, he becomes involved with the past--friends and co-workers in the Coney Island precinct where he broke in. Now partners with his older brother in a chain of wine stores, he still keeps his hopes alive as a sometime private investigator.

At the opening of the latest wine shop, his long-time friend, the chief of detectives, hands Moe a tape, setting off a chain of events resulting in a series of murders and unwanted revelations. It all began many years before, under the boardwalk in the shadow of the now-defunct parachute jump.

As were its predecessors, this book is good and entertaining reading, the character development solid, the writing terse and graphic.

Recommended.

I read The James Deans first, then Soul Patch, and the reviews of the next one in the series, Empty Ever After, so I know what's going to happen next in this storyline that carries from book to book. Apart from the crime & mystery part of the story, the author works in the marriage difficulties of the main character, Moe Prager former cop, now PI, but somehow it isn't believable, and this stuff gets old in Soul Patch. Moe Prager would be a better character without the wife and family aspect. If you've read The James Deans, you're well enough up on key elements of the yarn to guess in advance what's going to happen in Soul Patch. One other reviewer mentioned the numerous editing and proofreading errors in the book. That's an accurate observation. The poor production values detract from the book. Nobody ever heard of spell-check? Coleman's books might be an OK summer beach read, but he's no Hammett.

This book is good not for its mystery (the plot is pedestrian) but for the wisdom the author imparts to his main character. There's a quality to the writing that elevates this book above the average detective story -- the protagonist is ever pulled forward by his skilled perceptions in a way both wry and informed. The decaying atmosphere of the fictional "Soul Patch" section of Coney Island lets the reader live in this book. Ever since a friend gave me "The Friends of Eddie Coyle" I've been looking for a crime novel I enjoyed as much. This one comes close.