No Place Like Homicide

Rap Sheet contributor Stephen Miller today reviews two Bleak House Books titles in January Magazine: Dead Madonna, by Victoria Houston; and Soul Patch, by Reed Farrel Coleman. In both stories, he says, “the setting is not only interesting, but vitally important.” The eighth entry in Houston’s “Loon Lake Mystery” series finds small-town Chief of Police Lewellyn “Lew” Ferris investigating the deaths of a senior citizen and a Paris Hilton-wannabe.

The notion that these are two random victims, with nothing in common and with no apparent connections, is shattered when Chief Ferris is told by a pair of local bank presidents that they've noticed a disturbing series of transactions at their institutions involving phony deposits and mysterious but all too real withdrawals of large sums of money--transactions that appear to be part of a money-laundering scheme. And the two dead women? They were holders of accounts that had seen these transactions processed.

Meanwhile, Coleman’s new, fourth Moe Prager tale (after his award-winning The James Deans), set in George Bush I-era Brooklyn, New York, sends the ex-cop turned liquor merchant into the thick of a police corruption case involving the long-ago interrogation of drug dealers and the recent “suicide” of Prager’s former cop boss. Concludes Miller:

Coleman tells this story with the steady hand of a ship’s captain. This is Brooklyn of the late ’80s, long after the Dodgers had departed, but before the current round of gentrification. The earthiness and scrappiness of that borough and its middle-class inhabitants comes through on every page. There’s no inferiority complex here--there's pride on every street corner and in every restaurant and apartment building. Soul Patch brings to life the essence of dignity through the inevitable day-to-day struggle. It’s about trying to rescue the reputation of a man who didn’t deserve your loyalty, and was probably guilty as charged, anyway. It’s about trying to make the grade one more time, even after your time has passed and you should be moving on. It can happen to all of us, and fortunately, we have Moe Prager to show us the way.

Read all of Miller’s joint review here.