Onion Street

Starred review from March 11, 2013
Edgar-finalist Coleman’s outstanding eighth Moe Prager mystery (after 2011’s Hurt Machine) explains how the NYPD detective turned PI became a cop. The 2012 funeral of an old friend prompts Prager to recount the complex history he shared with the dead man, Bobby Friedman. The flashbacks begin in 1967, during Prager’s college years, in the aftermath of a car explosion on Coney Island. The blast killed Brooklyn College students Martin Lavitz and Samantha Hope, campus radicals affiliated with the antiwar movement. The official theory is that a bomb’s premature detonation foiled their plot to blow up a draft board office. Friedman, who was Hope’s boyfriend, is sure that the police aren’t telling the truth about her death. Soon after, Prager is just able to save Friedman from a speeding car. More violence compels Prager to investigate. The twists and turns are unpredictable, but Coleman pulls everything together by the end. Agent: David Hale Smith, Inkwell Management.

April 1, 2013

His friend Bobby's funeral brings up memories of volatile 1967 Brooklyn for Moe Prager. A student at Brooklyn College, Moe is worried about Bobby Friedman's possible connections to a radical political group. Moe feels uneasy enough about Bobby's safety to keep an eye on him, actually saving Bobby when he is almost killed in a hit and run. When Moe's girlfriend, Mindy, is beaten into a coma, he goes vigilante against an enemy he doesn't understand. Moe is forced to make an ally with an unexpected source, a drug dealer named Lids, if he hopes to survive. VERDICT The seventh outing (after Hurt Machine) for PI (and former NYPD cop) Moe Prager makes an effective coming-of-age prequel, explaining how he got into police work in the first place. Coleman has won multiple awards for his gritty but soulful series, and this entry is of that same high caliber. Don't miss it.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2013
Coleman's latesta prequel to the award-winning Moe Prager seriesis a slam-dunk recommendation for readers drawn to smart, gritty crime fiction with label-defying characters. Onion Street chronicles Moe's introduction to crime solving, showing him emerging from aimlessness and barreling toward purpose as his intuition for connecting crime dots is awakened. A Brooklyn College student in tumultuous 1967, Moe hasn't become entangled in the radical movements sweeping campuses (mostly because he's apathetic), but there's no exemption from danger when chants give way to violence. After Moe's activist girlfriend, Mindy, is found severely beaten, he has reason to doubt that the attack is a simple mugging. The night before, Moe ignored Mindy's warning that he should avoid his best friend, Bobby, and they narrowly missed being hit by a rampaging Cadillac. Bobby's been secretive lately, especially since his own girlfriend's suspicious death, but when Bobby denies the events are connected, Moe knows he's lying. Too curious to resist investigating, Moe is soon poking ata beehive of radical politics, drugs, thugs, cops, and Mob heavies. Exposing a well-loved character's backstory can be risky, but Coleman manages the trick just fine, with setting and character nicely balancing plot and action.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)