Onion Street

A Moe Prager Mystery, Book 8

By: Reed Farrel Coleman

Narrated by: Andy Caploe

Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins

Publisher's Summary

A Moe Prager Mystery

It's 1967 and Moe Prager is wandering aimlessly through his college career and his life. All that changes when his girlfriend Mindy is viciously beaten into a coma and left to die on the snow-covered streets of Brooklyn. Suddenly, Moe has purpose. He is determined to find out who's done this to Mindy and why. But Mindy is not the only person in Moe's life who's in danger. Someone is also trying to kill his best and oldest friend, Bobby Friedman.

Things get really strange when Moe enlists the aid of Lids, a half-cracked genius drug pusher from the old neighborhood. Lids hooks Moe up with his first solid information. Problem is, the info seems to take Moe in five directions at once and leads to more questions than answers. How is a bitter old camp survivor connected to the dead man in the apartment above his fixit shop, or to the OD-ed junkie found on the boardwalk in Coney Island? What could an underground radical group have to do with the local Mafioso capo? And where do Mindy and Bobby fit into any of this?

Moe will risk everything to find the answers. He will travel from the pot-holed pavement of Brighton Beach to the Pocono Mountains to the runways at Kennedy Airport. But no matter how far he goes or how fast he gets there, all roads lead to Onion Street.

©2013 Reed Farrel Coleman (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Prequel works well.

This was a flashback story, a welcome prequel to the rest in the series. Although #8, it should be called #0. It isn't my favorite in the series, but it was a well thought out glimpse into Moe Prager's college days and how he stumbled into becoming a cop. Being only a few years older than Moe, I found these reflections on life in the 1960's believable. There were so many twists and turns in the story that I have the feeling that I ought to reread it to get it all straight.

I listened to the audiobook. Somehow I didn't care for Andy Caploe's narration as much as in later books. I had the feeling he was trying too hard to lay a stronger Brooklyn accent on Moe than when he was older. Was it just me, or did anyone else have this reaction? Strange.