{"id":2141,"date":"2017-06-07T07:48:25","date_gmt":"2017-06-07T14:48:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=2141"},"modified":"2017-06-07T07:48:25","modified_gmt":"2017-06-07T14:48:25","slug":"the-mean-streets-of-l-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=2141","title":{"rendered":"The mean streets of L.I."},"content":{"rendered":"

The Briar Patch has a little catching up to do. Our excuse is that the Briar Patch’s physical location has moved. More about that later. But for now, fortunately, faithful correspondent Bob Moyer has taken time from his own travels to write a review.<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Robert P. Moyer<\/p>\n

WHAT YOU BREAK. By Reed Farrel Coleman. Putnam. 357 pages. $27.<\/p>\n

\"break\"<\/a>Ever since Raymond Chandler sent his fictional gumshoe Philip Marlow down the means streets of Los Angeles, hard-boiled writers have been pushing their PI\u2019s down the same path. Reed Farrel Coleman\u2019s Gus Murphy follows in those same footsteps, only in a different locale \u2013 Long Island.<\/p>\n

Williams is the quintessential hardboiled dick. He lost his son, his job, his family and his will to live: \u201cWhen you\u2019ve sat with the muzzle of a Glock nestled up under the fleshy part of your chin, your finger on the trigger, you get past giving a shit about what the world thinks of you.\u201d\u00a0Now, he drives a van back and forth to MacArthur Airport, which, as airports go, is \u201c\u2026almost as popular as a pork store in the heart of Jerusalem.\u201d\u00a0 He works at the Paragon Motel, where the \u201c\u2026night work was for people with secrets and stories not to tell.\u201d<\/p>\n

Slava is one of those people. A Chechnyan who claims to be from Poland, Slava says with a \u201d\u2026face turned headstone-cold,\u201d \u201cI am shamed in my soul.\u201d Now his past has caught up with him, and he needs Gus\u2019 help. He saved Gus\u2019 life in the last book, so Gus has no choice.<\/p>\n

Gus also has no choice except to help an acquaintance of Father Tom, the ex-priest who helped keep Gus alive. He asks Gus to help\u00a0 Micah Spear, like Slava, a broken man who has broken men. He\u2019s \u201c\u2026distant, superior, knowing with hints of blackened soul,\u201d but Gus agrees to help him find out why his granddaughter was killed. These two tasks take Gus and the reader into the dark side of both sides of the tracks on Long Island.<\/p>\n

Out of Coleman’s\u2019s pen, L.I. proves as atmospheric as L.A., with the \u201c…Long Island Expressway acting as our own version of the Mason-Dixon Line.\u201d\u00a0 As Gus wends his way through plot complications, we get a\u00a0 tour of the place, as well as why \u201c\u2026a trip out to the Hamptons \u2026becomes a test of a person\u2019s road-rage threshold.\u201d\u00a0 When\u00a0he crosses the railroad tracks in Bellport, Gus points out that they \u201c\u2026might just as well have been a wall or a moat, but you didn\u2019t need physical barriers when economic ones were just as effective and far less conspicuous.\u201d\u00a0Coleman is a master of noir that sheds light on society.<\/p>\n

After a crackerjack car chase in which \u201c\u2026\u2019shotgun\u2019 wasn\u2019t just a figure of speech,\u201d and a two-man assault on a barricaded site that has \u201cthe stink of heated rubber and plastic\u201d as well as the \u201crank odor of sweat and fear,\u201d Gus discovers the reason behind the girl\u2019s murder on the way to extricating Slava from a death penalty. The price he pays is worth it, for him and the growing cadre of his fans.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Briar Patch has a little catching up to do. Our excuse is that the Briar Patch’s physical location has moved. More about that later. But for now, fortunately, faithful correspondent Bob Moyer has taken time from his own travels to write a review. Reviewed by Robert P. Moyer WHAT YOU BREAK. By Reed Farrel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[590,5,14],"tags":[425,968,969],"class_list":["post-2141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-detective-fiction-mysteries","category-mysteries","category-thriller-suspense","tag-detective-fiction","tag-reed-farrel-coleman","tag-what-you-break"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2141"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2143,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2141\/revisions\/2143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}