What is the Hurt Machine? People? God? Life? Private investigator Moe (Moses) Prager ruminates on the nature of hurt--of human pain, both emotional and physical--as he delves into a case he didn't want, the murder of his ex-sister-in-law, Alta Conseco.
Prager didn't want the case for several reasons; one is his unresolved feelings for his ex-wife, and another is that the murder seems the victim didn't deserve his help. Alta Conseco was a paramedic in New York City, reviled because she and her partner were in a restaurant when an employee collapsed and subsequently died of a stroke. Although Alta was asked to assist the man, she stated that she and partner Maya were on their lunch break and couldn't do anything, and advised that someone call 911.
Moe takes the case, not because it's the right thing to do, but because he's just been diagnosed with cancer, which is ever-present on his mind. Believing that he has little time left, he wants to spend it doing something that will distract him from his fate. The investigation takes Moe to posh restaurants, pizza parlors, seedy dives, Irish bars, and throughout Brooklyn, where he grew up.
Complicating Moe's life is his daughter's wedding a few weeks away, a girlfriend a state or two away, and the lies he has to tell all the time to everyone. Moe is a man with a conscience strong enough to bother him, but not strong enough to prevent some of the sins he commits. Haunted by the memory of cops he once worked with and an ex-wife who was murdered, Moe plods through his investigation each day suffering new indignities from the cancer eating away his stomach.
In addition to reminding displaced New Yorkers of the ecstasy of Nathan's fries, author Reed Farrel Coleman infuses his story with enough suspects and motives to keep the reader guessing as Moe discovers more and more seediness in his ironic quest for the truth about both Alta's murder and the reason the two EMT's refused to help the dying man. Neither he nor the reader is prepared for how the two events are related, who was involved, how little we know about those closest to us. Hurt Machine is a satisfying, gritty mystery that keeps the reader inventing new theories.
