Maureen Corrigan, book reviewer for NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross, gave the Moe Prager mystery series a rave review. I decided to give Reed Farrel Coleman’s work a try by reading the first book in the series, Walking the Perfect Square. Moe Prager is a former New York City policeman who has retired because of a knee injury. He’s asked by a friend to look into the case of a missing son of another cop. Moe conducts his investigation, gets his car torched, and makes a fatal mistake. My problem with the book is that it is incredibly talky. Too much blah, blah, blah. GRADE: C+
George, the series definitely improves as it goes along – and once you get used to the fact that it’s set in the 1970’s. The James Deans is the best so far.
I have all the books in the series and will read them all over the Summer.
I also liked it for the authenticity of the New York settings, especially Brooklyn and the Catskills.
The New York and Connecticut settings in WALKING THE PERFECT SQUARE were very realistic and convincing.
Mr. Kelley reads C+ novels so we don’t have to. Thank you.
I read WALKING THE PERFECT SQUARE because Maureen Corrigan gave the Reed Farrel Coleman series an “A” review. Since Jeff Meyerson says the series gets better, I’ll read them all.
I didn’t like it very much either, George. I was sufficiently unimpressed to skip the rest of the series. Too many other things to read…
Without Jeff Meyerson’s encouragement, I may have abandoned the series. But Jeff’s tastes and mine coincide about 90% of the time so I’ll persist in reading Coleman’s series.
After reading plenty of hype about the series, I found a copy of The James Deans. Was greatly disappointed and have no plans to read any of the other books despite coming across a copy of Walking the Perfect Square when it was hard to find.
Kent, Jeff Meyerson assures me that the series gets better. I have all the books so I’ll read the complete series and see what happens. WALKING THE PERFECT SQUARE had the same effect on me that THE JAMES DEANS seem to have on you.