I realized one of the problems I had with the bulk of detective fiction was that too many of the protagonists tended to follow the fifty-plus-year-old template way too closely for my taste. Marlowe, Spade, Scudder, and Spenser didn’t need any freshening up at my hands. So I made a conscious choice to move away from the haunted, Christian, white guy, alcoholic, gun-crazed, fist-happy loner, with or without sidekick. Moe, I decided, would be a faithful family man, a stable man with stable people in his life. He’d have a wife and a kid, a car payment and a mortgage. He’d have a steady source of income, own a successful business that had nothing to do with police work. He’d have been a cop, but not a detective. He’d have been hurt on the job, but not in the line of duty. He would be haunted, but not by something he did on the job. No dead innocents, no stray bullets, no dirty deals in his past. The thing that would haunt Moe, that would threaten all he held dear would be not an act of commission, but of omission. I also wanted Moe to grow, to change, to age with the series. I have never much cared for the conceit of the static, ageless detective whose new case comes right on the heels of his last.
As I wrote Moe on the pages of Walking the Perfect Square, I realized that his voice was very intimate, certainly more intimate than I had anticipated. It was almost as if you could hear his internal voice. On the page, Moe Prager né Einstein, for all the years he evolved in my head, was more than I had dared hope for. For Moe, it seemed, simply having the reader understand what he was going through wasn’t good enough. He wanted you to feel what he was feeling when he was feeling it. He wanted to live beyond the page. Believe me, I was very surprised by how strongly he asserted himself, but that is the magic of writing. Writers are surprised by their own creations quite a bit more often than you might expect. Somehow, Moe has managed to survive five books in the series. Now it is up to you to determine whether or not his life is worth pursuing beyond the pages of Walking the Perfect Square.
Reed Farrel Coleman
January 2008
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Reed Farrel Coleman was Brooklyn born and raised. He is the former Executive Vice President of Mystery Writers of America. His third Moe Prager novel, The James Deans, won the Shamus, Barry and Anthony Awards for Best Paperback Original. The book was further nominated for the Edgar, Macavity, and Gumshoe Awards. The fourth Moe book, Soul Patch, was nominated for the 2008 Edgar Award for Best Novel. He was the editor of the short story anthology Hardboiled Brooklyn and his short stories and essays appear in Wall Street Noir, Damn Near Dead and several other publications. Reed lives with his family on New York’s Long Island. Visit him online at www.reedcoleman.com.
Walking the Perfect Square
Originally published in 2001 by The Permanent Press.
This edition, Busted Flush Press, 2008
This edition copyright © Reed Farrel Coleman, 2008
Foreword copyright © Megan Abbott, 2008
Afterword copyright © Reed Farrel Coleman, 2008
“Nobody Hurts You” written by Graham Parker. Copyright © 1979 Ellisclan Ltd (PRS). Administered by Bug Music. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
This a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
eISBN : 978-1-935-41512-1
First Busted Flush Press paperback printing, June 2008
Third printing, August 2010
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