Walking the Perfect Square

Table of Contents

 

 

 

“Reed Farrel Coleman is a terrific writer…. a hard-boiled poet… If life were fair, Coleman would be as celebrated as [George] Pelecanos and [Michael] Connelly.”

—Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s
Fresh Air

 

“Reed Farrel Coleman is one of the more original voices to emerge from the crime fiction field in the last ten years. For the uninitiated,
Walking the Perfect Square
is the place to start.”

—George Pelecanos, best-selling author of
The Way Home

 

“Among the undying conventions of detective fiction is the one that requires every retired cop to have a case that still haunts him. Reed Farrel Coleman blows the dust off that cliché in
Walking the Perfect Square
. . . with a mystery that would get under anyone’s skin.”

—Marilyn Stasio,
The New York Times

 

“The author makes us care about his characters and what happens to them, conveying a real sense of human absurdity and tragedy . . . a first-rate mystery. Moe is a fine sleuth. Coleman is an excellent writer.”

—
Publishers Weekly

 

“Whenever our customers are looking for a new series to read, they often leave with a copy of
Walking the Perfect Square
. It has easily been our best-selling backlist title. Thank you, Busted Flush, for bringing this classic ‘Moe’ back into print!”

—Gary Shulze, Once Upon a Crime (Minneapolis, MN)

 

“The biggest mysteries in our genre are why Reed Coleman isn’t already huge, and why Moe Prager isn’t already an icon. Both are to me. Read this book and you’ll find you agree.”

—Lee Child, best-selling author of
Gone Tomorrow

 

“Originally published in 2001 . . .
Walking the Perfect Square
has been reissued by Busted Flush Press, good news for mystery lovers, since Reed Farrel Coleman is quite a writer, and this is only the first of five books about Moe Prager. The story and the characters will hook you, and Coleman’s lightly warped take on the world will make you laugh, dark as the tale is. As soon as I finished
Walking the Perfect Square
, I started the next in the series,
Redemption Street
. The only problem with the following three (
The James Deans
,
Soul Patch
,
Empty Ever After
) will be to decide whether to read them immediately or savor them over a period of time.”

—Marilyn Dahl,
Shelf Awareness

 

“Moe’s back—if you haven’t already discovered Reed Farrel Coleman’s wonderful, award-winning ex-cop-turned-PI, Moe Prager, here’s your chance. He’s for real, and so is Coleman’s handling of cases that stay with you long after the book’s end.
Walking the Perfect Square
,
Redemption Street
, and
The
James Deans
belong in every mystery fan’s personal library, because the writing is fine, the realization is believable, and the character is true to himself. This is the man to measure the rest by, a writer with a passionate belief in giving his best, and an eye for what makes the PI novel work at a level few can match.”

—Charles Todd, best-selling author of
A Duty to the Dead

 

“One of crime fiction’s finest voices, Edgar Award-finalist Reed Coleman combines the hard-fisted detective story with a modern novel’s pounding heart and produces pure gold. Moe Prager belongs with Travis McGee and Lew Archer in the private eye pantheon. Coleman’s series is a buried treasure—dig in and hit the jackpot!”

—Julia Spencer-Fleming, best-selling author of
Once Was a Soldier

 

“Moe Prager is the thinking person’s P.I. And what he thinks about—love, loyalty, faith, betrayal—are complex and vital issues, and beautifully handled.”

—S. J. Rozan, Edgar Award-winning author of
The Shanghai Moon

 

“What a pleasure to have the first two Moe Prager novels back in print. In a field crowded with blowhards and phony tough guys, Reed Farrel Coleman’s hero stands out for his plainspoken honesty, his straight-no-chaser humor and his essential humanity. Without a doubt, he has a right to occupy the barstool Matt Scudder left behind years ago. In fact, in his quiet unassuming way, Moe is one of the most engaging private eyes around.”

—Peter Blauner, Edgar Award-winning author of
Casino Moon
and
Slow Motion Riot

 

“Reed Farrel Coleman makes claim to a unique corner of the private detective genre with
Redemption Street
. With great poignancy and passion he constructs a tale that fittingly underlines how we are all captives of the past.”

—Michael Connelly, best-selling author of
9 Dragons

 

“Moe Prager is a family man who can find the humanity in almost everyone he meets; he is a far from perfect hero, but an utterly appealing one. Let’s hope that his soft heart and lively mind continue to lure him out of his wine shop for many, many more cases.”

—Laura Lippman, best-selling author of
Life Sentences

“Reed Farrel Coleman is a hell of a writer. Poetic, stark, moving. And one of the most daring writers around, never afraid to go that extra mile. He freely admits his love of poetry, and it resonates in his novels like the best song you’ll ever hear. Plus, he has a thread of compassion that breaks your heart . . . to smithereens.”

—Ken Bruen, two-time Edgar Award-nominated author of
London Boulevard

 

“Coleman is a born writer. His books are among the best the detective genre has to offer at the moment; no, wait. Now that I think about it they’re in the top rank of any kind of fiction currently published. Pick up this book, damn it.”

—Scott Phillips, award-winning author of
The Ice Harvest
and
Cottonwood

 

“Reed Farrel Coleman goes right to the darkest corners of the human heart—to the obsessions, the tragedies, the buried secrets from the past. Through it all he maintains such a pure humanity in Moe Prager—the character is as alive to me as an old friend. I flat out loved the first Prager book, but somehow he’s made this one even better.”

—Steve Hamilton, Edgar Award-winning author of
Heaven’s Keep

 

“Coleman may be one of the mystery genre’s best-kept secrets.”

—
Sun-Sentinel

 

“Moe is a character to savor. And Coleman? He’s an author to watch. Make that watch and read. For this is only the beginning, folks, and I’m hitching my wagon to this ride.”

—Ruth Jordan,
Crimespree Magazine

Dylan Klein novels
Life Goes Sleeping
(1991)
Little Easter
(1993)
They Don’t Play Stickball in Milwaukee
(1997)

 

Moe Prager novels
Walking the Perfect Square
(2001)
Redemption Street
(2004)

The James Deans
(2005)

Soul Patch
(2007)

Empty Ever After
(2008)

Innocent Monster
(2010)

 

Tower
(2009)

Writing as Tony Spinosa
Hose Monkey
(2006)
The Fourth Victim
(2008)

 

Edited by Reed Farrel Coleman
Hardboiled Brooklyn
(2006)

 

I come at
Walking the Perfect Square
backwards. Having discovered Moe Prager in
The James Deans
, Reed Farrel Coleman’s critically acclaimed third novel in the series, I continued on with
Soul Patch
and
Empty Ever After
. Now, I turn to the originary novel and it is like a haunting—one of those dreams where you walk into a strange house only to discover it is your childhood home, aching with nostalgia and loss. The experience is doubly poignant, as all the sorrow that hangs in every corner of
Empty Ever After
begins here. It recalled for me nothing more intensely than back to back readings of Raymond Chandler’s
The Long Goodbye
and his first Philip Marlowe novel,
The Big Sleep
. You see the darkness beginning to spread at the end of
The Big Sleep
, as Marlowe, tainted by his case, famously bemoans, “Me, I was part of the nastiness now.” But you would never anticipate the gorgeous melancholy, the retreat from the world that marks
The Long Goodbye
. The beginnings and ends resemble each other, but don’t fully reveal the plummy depths to which the reader will go in following our heroes. As readers, we don’t emerge unscathed either.

The connection to Chandler is only natural. The Marlowe tradition is inevitably burned in all PI novelists’ brains. The anxiety of influence: do I embrace or reject the gimlet-soaked father? Coleman makes the smartest choice of all, and the most rewarding for readers. He gives us a detective deeply aware of his forebears, vigilant against clichés (but never afraid to play with them) and very much his own man. While many of Chandler’s “children” operate on the surface of the Marlowe tradition, Prager speaks to something deeper and more resonant in the detective’s character. For instance, it is commonplace that post-Marlowe PIs walk into any situation with wisecracks at the ready, but Marlowe’s deeper, wryer humor is at root a study of human nature, and a knowing tribute to its foibles and peculiarities. Consider Moe Prager describing a first dance with a woman:

There’s a warmth to the humor (not to mention a Chandlerian rhythm to it), which stems out of awareness of the pair’s awkwardness in the moment, hesitant interest, a wariness but also a gentleness. It draws us to Prager and there are a hundred moments like this in as many pages. It is of course hard to imagine Marlowe having such an uncomplicatedly pleasurable moment with a woman. The Marlowe novels are bristling with the sexual anxiety that kicked into life classic noir. But Prager’s world is not that world. It’s a world of families, friendships, close ties, intimacies. Betrayals can and do occur, but Prager’s relationships—romantic, familial, collegial, fraternal—are as central to this novel as Marlowe’s solitariness is to his.