A short snippet from my November book of the month, Reed Farrel Coleman's, Walking the Perfect Square, with the main character, Moe Prager, being his usual philosophical self.Leaving Pooty's I felt as much as I did after my college statistics classes: more confused on the way out than on the way in. But that was less Jack and Pete's fault than mine. My first step was a misstep. I could see that now. I was a bloodhound with no nose for blood. My forensics training was rudimentary at best. I wasn't going to find a magic carpet fiber or blood splatter. There was nothing at Pooty's for me to find that any of the other investigators, most far more experienced than myself, wouldn't have already stumbled upon. Maybe that's why they hadn't gotten anywhere. Sometimes, I thought, experience gets in the way. Even if I was wrong, it sounded good.
I found myself staring at Patrick Mahoney's poster pasted to a mailbox next to my car. 'HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?' the bold block letters wanted to know. It struck me that I hadn't really. I remembered a slide of a Magritte painting from my Introduction to Art History class - I guess I had college on my mind that day. It's funny what you think about. Anyway, the painting was of a tobacco pipe and the artist called it Ceci n'est pas une pipe. In English I'm pretty sure that translates into 'This is not a pipe'. The point is, it wasn't a pipe. It was a painting of a pipe. And the poster I was looking at wasn't Patrick Mahoney. I guess that's what hit me.
My review is here.
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