The Fourth Victim

August 4, 2008
In this passable whodunit from Spinosa, the sequel to Hose Monkey
(2006), Joe Serpe and Bob Healy, ex-cops and former adversaries who are now in the oil-delivery business on Long Island, get on the trail of the Oilman Murderer. The Oilman’s fourth victim, Rusty Monaco, like the previous three, is an oil truck driver, shot to death in an isolated area. Serpe and Healy soon find that Monaco, who was also an ex-cop, left behind a huge cache of cash that may be connected to a racially charged suspicious death in Harlem several years earlier. Spinosa, the pseudonym of Shamus-winner Reed Farrel Coleman, adds a conventional love-interest for Healy, an African-American internal affairs officer who risks her professional standing by digging into the past. This installment, with its routine shoot-outs, corruption and twists, falls short of the standard set by Coleman’s Moe Prager series (Soul Patch
, etc.).

September 1, 2008
After the fourth oil truck driver on Long Island, NY, is robbed and murdered, Joe Serpe and Bob Healy, former cops-turned-home oil business partners first introduced in "Hose Monkey", get involved because the latest victim is a former New York City police officer who saved Serpe's life. The bits and pieces of information that Serpe and Healy uncover make no sense. In the end, there is no winning, but the partners find a measure of peace. This gritty crime novel will suit readers who like Reggie Nadelson's street savvy and Michael Connelly's sense of hard justice. Spinosa is the pseudonym of Edgar Award nominee Reed Farrel Coleman, author of the award-winning Moe Prager series ("Soul Patch").

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 1, 2008
Former NYPD enemies Joe Serpe and Bob Healy coexist as partners in a Long Island heating-oil business simply by avoiding the fact that Healys investigation of crooked cops cost Serpe his job as a narcotics detective. But when someone begins to murder oil delivery drivers, Serpe and Healy feel honor bound to investigate. Spinosa, aka Reed Farrel Coleman, has ginned up a really hard-edged novel set in a wonderfully gritty milieu and filled with fully fleshed characters. The plot lays out a labyrinthine but believable trail of violence, murder, corruption, politics, deep-dyed racism, and big money. Serpe and Healy are a terrific odd couple, but a dozen lesser characters are also compelling, often for their sheer coarseness or loathsomeness. Even Spinosas depiction of the fiercely competitive, hardscrabble business of home heating-oil delivery rings with authenticity (the author actually has a commercial license to convey hazmat materials). If thats not enough, the first line of this fine novelAt his best, Rusty Monaco was a miserable, self-absorbed prick, and tonight he was paying even less attention than usual to the world outside his headis one of the two best first lines this reviewer has come across in 25 years of hard-boiled reading (the opening to James Crumleys The Last Good Kiss is still the best).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)