Bibliography:
Coleman, Reed Farrel. 2002. Walking the Perfect Square. Sag Harbor, New York: Permanent Press. ISBN:1579620396. Reprinted 2008 by Busted Flush Press ISBN:978-0979270956
As a reference librarian in the public library, one spends some time talking to patrons about books. Often I would be placing holds on books by their favorite authors, occaisionally I would recommend books I thought they might enjoy. On a rare occaision, someone would recommend a book to me. Thank goodness one of those recommendations was for Walking the Perfect Square, as I don’t think I ever would have found it on my own. Despite excellent reviews, being nominated and winning many prestigious awards, Reed Farrel Coleman is one of those (many) authors who never made it into the mainstream.
Perhaps it is because his books are somewhat hard to categorize. In Walking the Perfect Square, Moe Prager is a young man whose career in the police force was cut short by a freak accident. It’s not what you think–he was walking through the squad room, slipped on a piece of paper, fell down and blew out his knee. Not exactly going out in a blaze of glory. His brother convinces him that they should go into the wine business, abd Moe reluctantly agrees. When a college student seemingly vanishes from the streets of New York one day, Moe is hired by the family to look into his disappearance. In doign so, he enters the underground world of the punk scene, sex clubs, and biker bars, and he is faced with politicans, journalists, and cops who seem bent on stopping him from finding the truth.
Here is where the book shines. Moe is nothing is not determined. He made a name for himself as a youg patrol officer by finding a little girl who had been missing for several days. He just decided to go down to Coney Island and search for her. Later he couldn’t say exactly why, just that he needed to be searching. While he was there, he heard some faint noise and after some time, found her. He said he was lucky, but he is the kind of person who makes his own luck, and this story of saving the girl will follow and affect him for some time to come, as will the current one.
The set up of the book sounds like just another private investigator story. But Moe is dragged almost kicking and screaming into the job. It isn’t a cozy or a police procedural or a crime story. But is it a great story about a genuinely good man who can’t stop till he finds the truth, with some twists that you won’t see coming, and a decision that Moe is forced to make that will later come back to haunt him. Thank you to Busted Flush Press for reprinting both Walking the Perfect Square and Redemption Street (the second in the Moe Prager series sadly had been out of print.)
