Works by
Reed Farrel Coleman
(Writer)

reed@reedcoleman.com
http://www.reedcoleman.com
Profile created October 11, 2006

Little Easter (1993)
Dylan Klein, having come into some money during his last case, has given up his distinguished career as an insurance investigator in order to pursue his dream as a writer. But like stray light near a black hole, Klein is sucked into the vacuum of a deadly love triangle by the appearance of a mysterious woman and her subsequent execution.
Klein, alarmed that his best friend -- ex-New York City detective Johnny MacClough -- might somehow be involved, temporarily turns in his pen for the tools of the trade. With the questionable assistance of an alcoholic newspaper woman and a notorious criminal lawyer, Dylan Klein plunges headlong into the quicksand of organized crime and the powerful men behind it.

Klein faces enormous problems in his quest, not the least of which is Johnny MacClough's stubborn refusal to cooperate. If anything, the ex-detective appears bound and determined to sabotage the efforts being made on his behalf. Further complicating Klein's travails is the potential fallout from a tragic love affair. Left unresolved and dormant for over two decades, it threatens to explode like some forgotten time bomb left ticking in the attic. Can Klein defuse the situation or will it blow up in his face?

At its core, Little Easter is a novel about the falls we take and the ways in which we recover…if we recover at all. Join Dylan Klein's forays into the clandestine worlds of the Mafia, New York's Diamond Exchange, and behind the police department's blue wall of silence. Meet the fallen and the tall.

They Don't Play Stickball in Milwaukee (1997)
Dylan Klein, insurance investigator cum novelist, returns home from Hollywood to attend his father's funeral. After the burial, Klein learns that his nephew Zak is missing. Unable to get satisfactory answers as to the whereabouts of his son, Klein's older brother, Jeffrey, enlists the aid of Dylan and Dylan's most trusted friend, retired NYPD detective Johnny MacClough. They soon discover Zak's trail is not only icy cold, but paved in layers of blood and intrigue.
Their search leads them to a tranquil college town on the Canadian border. There, they stumble blindly into an underworld of murderers and international drug smugglers. Even as they p0ick up faint traces of Zak, MacClough is haunted by the specter of a twenty-year-old kidnapping case that had catapulted him to the rank of detective. Can Klein and MacClough continue to work together as the shocking facts about that old case erodes their friendship?

Distracted by his grief and the search for Zak, torn between his loyalty to MacClough and his desire for truth, a vulnerable Klein falls under the spell of a mysterious young woman. But is she what she claims to be, or she too have her own dark secrets? And what of the genius computer hacker Klein takes on in order to find his missing nephew? Will these desperate measures lead to Zak or to disaster?

Redemption Street (2004)
It's 1981. Ex NYC cop Moe Prager's comfortable new life is turned on its ear when he is hired to investigate an old fire at a Borscht Belt hotel. The 1966 fire took the lives of 17 people, mostly kids up from the city working in the mountains for the summer. As fate would have it, two of the teenage girls who perished in the fire had been Moe's high school classmates. One of the dead girls, Andrea Cotter, had been the object of Moe's adolescent affections.
Follow Moe Prager as he traverses a minefield of charred bodies, scarred lives, ambitious politicians and corrupt cops. Was the fire really caused by some fool smoking in bed or was it arson? Will the long dead keep their secrets or will they rise up to help Moe Prager uncover the truth? Will the truth lead down a blind alley or to the bright lights on Redemption Street?

Walking the Perfect Square (2001)
August 6th, 1998: Moe Prager, a former cop, waits to call his daughter for her 18th birthday. In the midst of an ugly family meltdown, Prager is desperate to find a way to make sense of what has caused his once-happy family to implode. As he waits, however, it is Prager who receives a call that might not only solve a case that has haunted him and his wife for twenty years, but might also supply the glue to patch his family back together.
December 8th, 1977: Patrick Maloney, a supposedly popular college student, walks out of a Manhattan nightspot into oblivion. It's no wonder Maloney's disappearance barely registers on the radar screen. Son of Sam strikes. Elvis is Dead. It's the Sex Pistols vs. the Bee Gees, Studio 54 and the Dirt Lounge, est and yin/yang, gas shortages, Quaaludes, pot and polyester, Plato's Retreat, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and the neutron bomb.

Moe Prager, a cop forced into early retirement by injury, certainly hadn't noticed Patrick Maloney's disappearance. But when Prager's ex-partner calls with an offer to work on the case, Moe, wracked with self-doubt over his undistinguished career, signs on.

As Prager traces Patrick Maloney's steps from his upstate home to his college dorm on Long Island, from the Tribeca bar where he was last seen to an old flame's mansion on the Gold Coast, Moe realizes that nothing about the case, especially the details of the missing man's life, is as it seems.

Even the picture of his parents gave the police was two years out of date. Why? What could his parents be hiding? What tortured secrets might have driven Patrick to create a public persona so different from his true self?

Questions multiply as Prager searches for Patrick in New York's notorious punk underground, gay clubs and biker bars. Will Moe's blossoming relationship with Patrick's older sister help to bring Maloney back home or will it help to destroy any progress in the case? Can Moe overcome the roadblocks thrown in his path by dirty cops, corrupt politicians, and an ambitious reporter? And who are the truly ominous forces working behind the scenes to pull Prager into the very private hell of the Maloney family? Is Moe Prager running in circles or simply walking the perfect square?

Life Goes Sleeping (1991)
Dylan Klein, in a bush league insurance investigator, returns to his old Brooklyn neighborhood for his mother's funeral. Alienated from his family and by the rituals of his faith, unable to reach the grief he knows is there, Klein sets out on a journey fraught with treason, murder, and betrayal.
Klein and his close friend, ex-New York City Police detective Johnny MacClough, stumble through an odyssey fueled by the winds of change: winds themselves created by a thawing in the Cold War. Klein and MacClough are buffeted as the two super powers struggle to erase some potentially embarrassing loose ends left dangling since WWII. Another player, a "wanna-be" power, injects poison into the brew in an attempt to snag the loose ends for its own purposes: political blackmail or, maybe, just revenge.

Ultimately, however, Life Goes Sleeping is not a spy/thriller, but rather a hardboiled detective novel rooted in the traditions of the 30's and 40's. Klein is a man trading water for his life. When one of his clients is brutally murdered, he is forced to learn how to swim or drown. Johnny MacClough is both his lifeguard and his instructor. These men are too preoccupied with the small picture - namely, their own survival - to worry about politics and matters of state. For them, the puzzle pieces multiply. The game keeps getting more complex, but someone's neglected to send them a rule book.

Working with an intensity born of desperation to untangle the webs that has trapped them, Klein and MacClough's ultimate rewards are discoveries about their own lives - lives that will no longer go on sleeping.

The James Deans (2005) -- Nominated for an Edgar Award® for Best Paperback Original; a Barry Award for Best Paperback; a Gumshoe Award for Best Mystery; a Macavity Award for Best Novel; and an Anthony Award for Best Paperback Original
It’s 1983 and Reaganomics is in full swing. But beneath the facade of junk bonds and easy money, New York remains a gritty metropolis offering Nirvana with one hand and desolation with the other. Moe Prager, ex-NYPD cop turned reluctant P.I. is too busy reeling from a family tragedy to see what’s coming. He’s about to be sucked into a case that might deliver him what he’s always wanted or plunge him into purgatory. Two years earlier, Moira Heaton, a young intern for an up-and-coming politico, vanished without a trace. Although there is no evidence supporting her boss’s involvement, rumors and whispers have conspired to stall his once-promising career. Now, in a last- ditch effort to clear his name, state senator Steven Brightman, with the clout of a wealthy backer, enlists Moe’s help. With twists and turns galore and Moe’s inimitable voice, The James Deans is an absorbing page- turner that will add to the burgeoning reputation of one of today’s most promising writers.

Edited by Reed Farrel Coleman

Hardboiled Brooklyn (2006)
Bagels, bullies, and bad girls... An anthology of slash and burn short stories set in the County of Kings, this collection boasts an all-star line up of today's hottest crime fiction writers.

Works by Reed Farrel Coleman(Writer)

Edited by Reed Farrel Coleman

See also:

Works by
Reed Farrel Coleman
(Writer)