At the beginning of The James Deans, a wealthy man pressures Moe to investigate the unsolved case of a murdered intern of a state senator. The crime derailed the career of the politician, changing him from a rising star to a prime suspect. His wealthy backer wants him cleared so the man can continue his climb.
As a cop in Brooklyn ten years earlier, Moe Prager made the papers when he solved a missing child case. The rich man believes Moe is luckier than the police and the private investigators stumped by the case.
The pressure applied to Moe comes in the form of a state inspector arriving at his wine shop. The message to Moe is people with political pull can make his life miserable if he refuses to work the case. Moe agrees to take a look. A friend in the NYPD helps him with department information. But another former cop, the hard-drinking father of the dead woman, refuses to talk to Moe, which is a smaller mystery within the larger story.
Moe digs into the case, exposing other mysteries and placing himself, his brother, and his wife and child in danger.
The James Deans is Reed Farrel Coleman’s third Moe Prager mystery, but the first I have read. Meeting his cool, savvy P.I. and sampling his hard-edged writing style, I will be reading more Moe Prager stories, soon.
(For more posts on books, check out Patti Abbott's blog.)
I have this one in the tubs along with some other Prager books. I read something from his earlier Dylan Klein series and shamefully never got back to him. He had a collaborative novel with Ken Bruen that I can't remember if I read or not.
ReplyDeleteI think you will like this book. Coleman gives you plenty of local NY color with the people and places, and he also drives the story forward with every page.
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