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A Gus Murphy Novel
by Reed Farrel Coleman
Former Suffolk County cop Gus Murphy returns to prowl the meaner streets of Long Island's darkest precincts with a Russian mercenary at his back in the stunning second installment of Reed Farrel Coleman's critically acclaimed series.
Gus Murphy and his girlfriend, Magdalena, are put in harm's way when Gus is caught up in the distant aftershocks of heinous crimes committed decades ago in Vietnam and Russia. Gus's ex-priest pal, Bill Kilkenny, introduces him to a wealthy businessman anxious to have someone look more deeply into the brutal murder of his granddaughter. Though the police already have the girl's murderer in custody, they have been unable to provide a reason for the killing. The businessman, Spears, offers big incentives if Gus can supply him with what the cops cannot - a motive.
Later that same day, Gus witnesses the execution of a man who has just met with his friend Slava. As Gus looks into the girl's murder and tries to protect Slava from the executioner's bullet, he must navigate a minefield populated by hostile cops, street gangs, and a Russian mercenary who will stop at nothing to do his master's bidding. But in trying to solve the girl's murder and save his friend, Gus may be opening a door into a past that was best left forgotten. Can he fix the damage done, or is it true that what you break you own ... forever?
"Starred Review. Coleman doesn't pull any punches or settle for pat character arcs in presenting a realistically flawed Gus, who realizes that his morality 'was not so much a search for the truth as a set of rationalizations that let sleep at night.'" - Publishers Weekly
"Coleman writes some of the best prose in modern crime fiction…stunning." - Booklist
"Coleman's second series outing (after Where It Hurts) is part police procedural, part human interest story, part philosophical monologue, and totally fun reading." - Library Journal
"'Knowledge of the dead changes nothing', announces the shop-soiled hero in resignation. Maybe not, but it does add a soulful depth to his investigation while readers wait for his two cases to collide." - Kirkus
This information about What You Break was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Reed Farrel Coleman, called "a hard-boiled poet" by NPR's Maureen Corrigan and the "noir poet laureate" in The Huffington Post, is the Edgar-nominated author of twenty-three novels and three novellas, including the critically acclaimed Moe Prager series and the first novel in this series, Where It Hurts. A three-time winner of the Shamus Award, he has also won the Anthony, Macavity, Barry, and Audie awards.
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