Is This You?

You fall asleep with an open book on your chest and the reading lamp shining in your eyes.

You have serious book spill-over on your crowded shelves.

You are so skilled at shaking hands, nodding your head and smiling at some obligatory social events that no one would know that all you’ve been thinking of is that half finished novel on your reading chair.

You are in a bookstore with a stack of seven books that you absolutely have to read but you can only afford three. You buy five and still feel deprived.

You think of libraries as holy places, a retreat from the ever increasing confusion and dumbed-down babble out there.

You meet someone who says they never read for pleasure, but only for information and you pity them. Even if they are richer, thinner, better looking or more accomplished than you; you pity them.

You are a Bookie. If people who love the sight, smell, texture and flavor of food are foodies then we bibliophiles are bookies. Even when we are reading, we wonder what we will be reading next. I am always trolling websites, podcasts and print for synopses or reviews of new releases, or roundups of readers’ favorites, or gleaning clues from annual book award lists.

What I would like to do in this blog is write about books I have been reading (mostly fiction, memoirs, some biographies, collections of essays or short stories and occasional non-fiction that interests me). The reviews will be decidedly unacademic, just my subjective opinions about the book and other book-related trivia or treasure. I would love to hear from those of you who have read the book and agree or disagree with my opinions or want to recommend books you love or those you threw against the wall in despair or disgust (Warning: Do NOT do this with your e-reader!) What about those you abandon in boredom, or set aside for another time because,while it has possibilities, you just are not in the mood for it now? All reactions, opinions, ideas are welcome at Bookies.

Here is my first review:

Hurt Machine by Reed Farrell Coleman

At the start of the novel, we learn that Moe, a sixtyish, mostly retired Private Investigator has been told that he has a cancerous tumor in his stomach and has to face the rigorous, debilitating chemo and radiation treatments required to fight the disease. Moe’s only child, a daughter is getting married in a few months and he has decided not to tell anyone about the diagnosis because it could cast a pall on the ceremony.

Within a few minutes, he not so accidentally runs into his ex-wife who wants him to investigate the murder of her older sister, an EMT who was stabbed on a New York City street. At the time of the murder, the victim and her partner, were getting hate mail and negative media attention because a month earlier, while off duty in a restaurant, they refused to help a dying man in the kitchen of the posh Manhattan eatery.

Moe is grateful for the job for several reasons. First, he is badly in need of distraction from the despairing thoughts about his health and is bored with his day job as co-owner of two wine shops in Brooklyn. Also because he is still attracted to his ex-wife who left him abruptly years ago and took her son whom he was raising as his own child. Pam, Moe’s current love, notices the spark between them and is jealous and suspicious. These personal and professional crises provide an entertaining sub-plot to Moe’s investigation

Reed Farrell Coleman’s novel does depend on a lot of standard PI plotting: An official at the precinct where he used to work warns him off the case and then is won over, there are a crew of colorful former acquaintances on both sides of the law who either help or hinder the investigation, there’s a lot of street slang, bar scenes and gritty Brooklyn and New York City settings. One plot device that I question is having Moe decide to postpone until late in the novel the investigation into the background of the man who the victim and her partner neglected to help. I think a seasoned and savvy detective like Moe would have pursued that link from the start.

Despite the urban hustle, Moe’s age and illness, dread of his upcoming treatments and guilt and confusion about past relationships gives this novel a sad, regretful undertone. This is the first novel I’ve read in this series, but I like it enough to want to read the previous Praeger novels by Coleman and to hope that this par-boiled detective (I know he’s soft at the center) survives to solve another crime.

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