New Releases by Reed Farrel Coleman

At a pre-wedding party for his daughter Sarah, Moe Prager is approached by his ex-wife and former PI partner Carmella Melendez. It seems Carmella''s estranged sister Alta has been murdered, but no one in New York City seems to care. Why? Alta, a FDNY EMT, and her partner had months earlier refused to give assistance to a dying man at a fancy downtown eatery. Moe decides to help Carmella as a means to distract himself from his own life-and-death struggle. Making headway on the case is no mean feat as no one, including Alta''s partner Maya Watson, wants to cooperate. Moe chips away until he discovers a cancer roiling just below the surface, a cancer whose symptoms include bureaucratic greed, sexual harassment, and blackmail. But is any of it connected to Alta''s brutal murder?

When former NYPD detective Joe Serpe hit bottom, he just kept on going. Having lost his career to charges of corruption, his family to divorce, his partner to suicide, and his fireman brother to the tragedy of 9/11, Serpe''s world is nearly empty but for his cat, Mulligan. Living in a basement apartment in a blue collar town on Long Island, Joe spends his days filling tanks with home heating oil and his nights filling his belly with vodka. But when a young, mentally challenged man who worked for Joe''s oil company is cruelly murdered, Joe Serpe rediscovers purpose and grasps for a last chance at redemption. Along with his former Internal Affairs Bureau nemesis, Bob Healy, and Marla Stein, a brave and beautiful, group home psychologist, Joe wades into the world of street gangs, anti-immigration organizations, and the Red Mafia. Hose Monkey is a rough and tumble ride through a violent, often cruel world--a world where it''s hard to tell the bad guys from the good guys without a scorecard. It is a world of murder and extortion, but one in which an innocent Down''s Syndrome girl may hold the key that unlocks the mystery. At the same time, Hose Monkey is a story of salvation and forgiveness . . . a tale of justice done.

A year after ex-NYPD detectives and former enemies Joe Serpe and Bob Healy teamed up to solve the murder of a metnally challenged young man who worked at Joe''s company--and prevented the Russian Mafia from infiltrating the home heating oil business on Long Island--they are faced with an even more heinous series of crimes. Five oil truck drivers have been robbed and shot to death, their lifeless bodies left to bleed out on the cold and loveless suburban streets. The killer should have chosen his victims more wisely, because the fourth victim, Rusty Monaco, was another retired NYPD detective, one who had saved Joe Serpe''s life while they were both still on the job.

When his estranged daughter Sarah comes to him with a request he cannot refuse, Moe Prager takes a deep breath and plunges back into the icy, opaque waters of secrets and lies.

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 BeeGees, 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 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?