Hurt Machine (Moe Prager Series #7)

by Reed Farrel Coleman

Overview

At a pre-wedding party for his daughter Sarah, Moe Prager is approached by his ex-wife and former PI partner Carmella Melendez. It seems Carmella's estranged sister Alta has been murdered, but no one in New York City seems to care. Why? Alta, a FDNY EMT, and her partner had months earlier refused to give assistance to a dying man at a fancy downtown eatery.

Moe decides to help Carmella as a means to distract himself from his own life-and-death struggle. Making headway on the case is no mean feat as no one, including Alta's partner Maya Watson, wants to cooperate. Moe chips away until he discovers a cancer roiling just below the surface, a cancer whose symptoms include bureaucratic greed, sexual harassment, and blackmail. But is any of it connected to Alta's brutal murder?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781440532009
Publisher:	Gallery Books
Publication date:	11/18/2011
Series:	Moe Prager Series , #7
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	285,306
File size:	367 KB

About the Author

Reed Farrel Coleman is a New York Times bestselling author that has been called a "hard-boiled poet" by NPR's Maureen Corrigan and the "noir poet laureate" in The Huffington Post. He has published more than twenty-five previous novels, including novels in Robert Parker’s Jesse Stone series, the critically acclaimed Moe Prager series, and the Gus Murphy series. A three-time winner of the Shamus Award, he has also won the Anthony, Macavity, Barry, and Audie Awards. He lives with his family on Long Island.

Editorial Reviews

Razor-edged contemporary whodunits don’t get much better than Shamus-winner Coleman’s seventh Moe Prager mystery (after 2010’s Innocent Monster). Shortly after the Brooklyn PI learns that he has stomach cancer, Carmella Melendez, his ex-wife, asks him to look into the stabbing murder of her estranged sister, Alta Conseco. Two months before her demise, Conseco and a fellow EMT, Maya Watson, became the subject of international outrage after failing while off-duty to help Robert Tillman, a cook who suffered a fatal stroke at a Manhattan bistro. Prager pursues the obvious course of seeking a link between Conseco’s and Tillman’s deaths. Watson has become an uncommunicative recluse, who provides little help, but the owner of the restaurant near where Conseco died is an old friend and an ex-cop, happy to help in any way he can. Logical and surprising plot twists combine with Prager’s world-weary narrative voice to produce another winner. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

"Razor-edged contemporary whodunits don't get much better than Shamus-winner Coleman's seventh Moe Prager mystery." —Publisher's Weekly, starred review

"Moe Prager's . . . first love will always be Brooklyn. Reed Farrel Coleman's latest book in a series heavily saturated with local color. Prager . . . travels the length and breadth of the city talking to cops, firemen, gangsters and restaurateurs in their picturesque natural habitats. For someone who reads people by the places they eat, drink and make merry, that's good enough to make Prager postpone his death until he solves this case." —New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher

Facing his own mortality when cancer strikes, hardheaded Moe Prager (Innocent Monster) agrees to help his ex-wife once again. What's the real story behind the murder of her sister, an FDNY emergency medical technician, and why is Moe the only one investigating?

Library Journal