Onion Street

Edgar-finalist Coleman’s outstanding eighth Moe Prager mystery (after 2011’s Hurt Machine) explains how the NYPD detective turned PI became a cop. The 2012 funeral of an old friend prompts Prager to recount the complex history he shared with the dead man, Bobby Friedman. The flashbacks begin in 1967, during Prager’s college years, in the aftermath of a car explosion on Coney Island. The blast killed Brooklyn College students Martin Lavitz and Samantha Hope, campus radicals affiliated with the antiwar movement. The official theory is that a bomb’s premature detonation foiled their plot to blow up a draft board office. Friedman, who was Hope’s boyfriend, is sure that the police aren’t telling the truth about her death. Soon after, Prager is just able to save Friedman from a speeding car. More violence compels Prager to investigate. The twists and turns are unpredictable, but Coleman pulls everything together by the end. Agent: David Hale Smith, Inkwell Management. (May)