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	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Crime & mystery fiction
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reedcoleman.com

WHERE IT HURTS

Reed Farrel Coleman

From critically acclaimed and award-winning author Reed Farrel Coleman comes the first book in a gritty, atmospheric new series about the other side of Long Island, far from the wealth of the Hamptons, where real people live—and die.

Gus Murphy thought he had the world all figured out. A retired Suffolk County cop, Gus had everything a man could want: a great marriage, two kids, a nice house, and the rest of his life ahead of him. But when tragedy strikes, that life is thrown into complete disarray.

Divorced and working as a courtesy van driver for the run-down hotel in which he keeps a room, Gus has settled into a mindless, soulless routine that barely keeps his grief at arm’s length. But Gus’ comfortable waking trance comes to an end when ex-con Tommy Delcamino asks him for help. Four months earlier, Tommy’s son T.J.’s battered body was discovered in a wooded lot, yet the Suffolk County police department doesn’t seem interested in pursuing the killers. In desperation, Tommy seeks out the only cop he ever trusted—Gus Murphy.

Gus reluctantly agrees to see what he can uncover. As he sweeps away the layers of dust collected on the case, Gus finds that Tommy was telling the truth. It seems that everyone involved with the late T.J. Delcamino—from his best friend, to a gang enforcer, to a mafia capo, and even the police—has something to hide, and all are willing to go to extreme lengths to keep it that way. It’s a dangerous favor Gus has taken on as he claws his way back to take a place among the living, while searching through the sewers for a killer.

Reed Farrel Coleman, author of the New York Times–bestselling Robert B. Parker’s Blind Spot, has been called a “hard-boiled poet” by NPR’s Maureen Corrigan and the “noir poet laureate” in The Huffington Post. He has published twenty-one novels, including nine books in the critically acclaimed Moe Prager series. He is a three-time recipient of the Shamus Award for Best Detective Novel of the Year, a winner of the Barry and Anthony awards, and is a three-time Edgar Award nominee. An adjunct instructor at Hofstra University and an instructor for MWA U, he lives with his family on Long Island.

Available products
Book Published 2016-01-26 by Putnam
Book Published 2016-01-26 by Putnam

Comments

Where It Hurts is taut, smart, and engaging with a terrific sense of place. Readers will never go wrong with Gus Murphy or his creator Reed Farrel Coleman.

Coleman’s moving portrayal of a man in deep, deep pain, a tightly constructed plot, and a gift for making Long Island seem like James Ellroy’s L.A. add up to a winner.

If you have read Coleman's earlier works you know he has a knack for killer sentences and characters. But Gus Murphy is something special. His grief feels real, his demons believable, his personal wilderness tough to bear but necessary. And I like this working class Long Island a whole lot.

Coleman is an excellent storyteller, and his colorful, punchy writing displays a delicious noir cynicism…. But what local crime fiction fans will find most absorbing about “Where It Hurts” is its clear-eyed, knowing portrait of the people and places that comprise Long Island’s hidden underworld.

Reed Farrel Coleman writes elegantly about damaged people who live in a sharp-edged world.

"Where It Hurts” is one of those evocative mysteries that readers will remember as much for its charged sense of place as for any of its other considerable virtues.

Modern noir at its absolute best! Reading Where It Hurts is to bask in the joy of the heyday of private eye fiction—Chandler, Hammett, Cain and the whole crew. Everything’s a delight, from the speedy and clever plot, to the firecracker snap of the dialog, to the heart-wrenching portrayal of the characters—good and bad. And Gus Murphy, what a protagonist! Coleman’s truly delivered, and then some.

This superb novel is part police procedural and part crime fiction that morphs into a thriller. The buildup is compelling…keep a scorecard, because there are numerous characters with a variety of nicknames. Enjoy the surprise ending.

Reed Farrel Coleman’s Where It Hurts tells a riveting story about a Long Island that has nothing to do with the romantic vision of F. Scott Fitzgerald in this action packed tale of an amoral world. Coleman is a born storyteller who writes with great authority and gives as much bang for the buck as the best books in the genre.

One of the greatest voices in contemporary crime fiction, and one of the best storytellers too. I loved this book. Nobody does it better.

Gus, who is absolutely one of genre veteran Coleman’s best-drawn characters, brings the hard-boiled investigator’s requisite battle scars to the table without the self-destructive bent we’ve been trained to expect. Instead, he meets his tragedy and its consequences with a considered straightforwardness, and his desire for justice reawakens in time with the investigation’s quickening tempo, hopefully signaling the start of a series.

Where It Hurts is a thrilling start to a new series by Reed Farrel Coleman - who writes some of the best crime fiction around. Tough prose, taut plotting, and a great new protagonist named Gus Murphy. Coleman's got a winner here.

Gus Murphy is the new name in crime fiction. He is my kind of guy and Where It Hurts, Reed Farrel Coleman’s spectacularly absorbing new novel, is my kind of story. You go into a story like this expecting/hoping for a solid character to ride with, a high-octane story in which you don’t see the turns coming in the road ahead, and a truthful observation on life from a different angle. As usual, Coleman delivers. I can’t wait for Murphy and Coleman to show up again.

Reed Farrel Coleman introduces a great new character, Gus Murphy, a street savvy ex-cop who operates beneath the glitter of the Gold Coast and the glitz of the Hamptons in a Long Island that few outsiders ever see. Where It Hurts is a gut punch of a novel, a murder mystery layered with grief, greed, and grit. Coleman is as good as Chandler, Hammett or Ed McBain.

This superb novel is part police procedural and part crime fiction that morphs into a thriller.

The author of the ‘Moe Prager’ series has created another engaging sleuth in the down-but-not-out Gus…The ancillary characters, both good and bad, are also a fascinating mix. Moe Prager fans will hail this new series, as will lovers of solid mysteries, especially those set on Long Island.

Fans who find Gus’ “portable dark cloud” appealing will be glad to know that Coleman (Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins, 2015, etc.) plans to build a new series around him. Bring on the gloom and doom.

Where It Hurts ushers us into a vivid and rueful new world with a striking and haunted hero for whom we fall hard. With his signature hard-bitten lyricism but with an urgency and darkness all its own, Reed Farrel Coleman has given us a riveting new series we’ll want to live with for a very, very long time.

Reed Farrel Coleman belongs in a different decade. He should have been writing crime novels in the 1930s and ’40s and rubbing elbows with Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. The three-time Shamus Award winner for best detective novel of the year is every bit their equal.

Coleman has long been one of the best crime novelists in the business…."Where It Hurts" is a superb detective novel in the Raymond Chandler tradition, featuring fine prose, a suspenseful yarn and a compelling main character who will leave readers hungering for the next installment.