In Hurt Machine, Reed Farrel Coleman has Moe Prager's guts in an uproar, both figuratively and literally. The tight plotting, great characters and Brooklyn setting will have your guts in an uproar too as Moe faces down his greatest challenges ever. This is writing at its best. Make sure you read it. ( )

This is the 7th book in the Moe Prager series. Moe is old, has a cancerous tumor in his stomach, and hasn’t worked a case in years, but he is still tough. When his ex-wife and ex-partner in his PI business, Carmella, asks him to look into the death of her sister Alta, he does it much to the disapproval of his current girlfriend and in spite of his daughter’s impending wedding. Alta was an EMT. She and her partner became pariahs in the city when they refused to help a heart attack victim and he died. Soon after, she is murdered. There is no shortage of suspects, but Moe finds that everyone he talks to, even Carmella, is hiding something. What were they doing in a high-priced restaurant in the first place and why didn’t they help? Moe, as he usually does, blunders about, but keeps at it until the pieces start to come together. In the meantime, he has plenty of time to muse about his cancer and whether people are a hurt machine.
This is a solid series. Moe is an interesting character, cynical, fallible, tough and given to introspection. He also has had to work through some difficult interpersonal relationships and tragedies. I have enjoyed the series and will read the final two installments. ( )

In Hurt Machine, Reed Farrel Coleman has Moe Prager's guts in an uproar, both figuratively and literally. The tight plotting, great characters and Brooklyn setting will have your guts in an uproar too as Moe faces down his greatest challenges ever. This is writing at its best. Make sure you read it. ( )

(Moe Prager series #6) I'm about done looking to this series for anything more than more of the same. This seems like a good crime novel that wasn't developed into something better. Instead I see a writer punching the proverbial clock. ( )

a great new book by this really wonderful author, don't miss it. it is another one of his mystery series. ( )