Soul Patch is the 4th in Reed Farrel Coleman’s Moe Prager series. As explained in the frontispiece, the title refers to the name given by police to the predominantly black area in Coney Island. In contrast to the first three installments, Moe is not asked to find a missing person. Instead the plot is set in motion when he is given a tape by one of his old friends on the police force, Larry McDonald, who is now the chief of detectives. The tape is of a police interview in which the subject offers information on the murder of a drug dealer. When Larry is found dead, apparently by suicide decides to investigate. Moe’s marriage is hitting some bumpy spots and he is strongly attracted to a young Puerto Rican detective on the case. (I found it a bit implausible that a cynical middle-aged Moe was mooning over this woman and that she was attracted to him. The connection between them that is revealed at the end of the novel is definitely implausible). The plot gets a bit complicated with a surfeit of characters but works its way to a satisfying conclusion.

This is a solid and well-written series and I will continue with it. ( )

(Moe Prager series #4) Like the Harry Potters, successive books always retell the previous ones, include most of the same characters, and the next "assignment" gets foisted on him against his will. A few too many layers of bad guys but it was interesting and I enjoy his writing. ( )

The Moe Prager series is just consistently good. It's 1989 and Larry MacDonald comes to Moe with a cassette tape of a police interview with a low level drug dealer, Malik. Malik wants to bargain with information about the murder of a major drug dealer, D Rex, in 1972. MacDonald is scared for some reason that Moe can't fathom.

When MacD's body is found near one of the Brooklyn garbage dumps, an apparent suicide, Prager can't believe it. He begins investigating and makes some very unusual discoveries about the case and a few discoveries about other things as well.

Moe is just one likable guy, that's all there is to it. I wish there was a little more of Y.W. Fenn and Israel Roth, but hey, you can't have everything. Soul Patch is just a good read. So enjoy. Two more to go before I'm caught up and ready for Coleman's latest (and possibly last) Moe Prager mystery due out at the end of 2011. ( )

Competent PI novel, with an interesting setup, that gets bogged down in a too-large cast of characters. By the end I didn't much care who did it because there were so many rather flatly drawn characters at work.

Moe bugs me. I find him a little too self-congratulatory in his humility, which strikes frequent false notes. How, for instance, does this 40+ guy entice the beautiful young woman? How does he inspire the devotion of so many friends and ex-friends? Why is his wife so delighted when he deigns to pay attention to her? I find him most grating when he's exploring his own psyche, which comes out squeaky clean despite a variety of challenges.

Coney Island...a locale with potential, but RC stops short of delving into its hidden personality, describing only its physical environs.

All that said, I did get through the book without being too bored.