Tapply With a Twist

Reading a new William G. Tapply novel in the Brady Coyne series is like ordering your favorite dish in a restaurant that has maintained its high culinary standards for nearly a quarter of a century. You know exactly what is going to be in the dish and that it will be as satisfying as the last twenty-two times it was ordered.

The twenty-third offering about the adventures and loves of the Boston lawyer is ONE-WAY TICKET. In it, Tapply gives us the expected mix of ingredients, all blended with his unique talent. However, there is a twist in the way the ingredients are presented.

Brady Coyne is still a lawyer with a small list of well-heeled clients whose fee payments keep his bank accounted padded to a level that eliminates financial worries. Lawyer Coyne is still blessed with a secretary who does the grunt work in the law office while her boss daydreams about fishing his favorite trout streams or skips days at work to play sleuth.

The proclivity of Coyne's willingness to help people with a problem leads him again into the world of Boston's bad guys. His efforts require dealing with a member of the Russo family who are trying to collect a gambling debt from the son of one of Brady's old classmates and fishing buddy. The Russo family's position is that the debt is overdue, and the debt must be settled by one means or another. Before Coyne can get the slate wiped cleaned, he finds himself involved in delicate discussions with one of Boston's leading female judges as well as having to deal with a group of amateur but clever crooks that devise a method to snare the payoff loot for themselves.

The reader also finds that Coyne is still sharing his townhouse on Beacon Hill with his latest love, Evie, the hospital administrator. However, as in his past affairs of the heart, something of a question mark hangs over the relationship. Evie is on the west coast to spend time with her terminally ill father, and Coyne is experiencing his usual amount of angst. This loyal reader of this series seriously questions if Evie will be around by the end of the next Brady Coyne novel.

By comparison, Coyne's relationship with Henry David Thoreau, his Brittany spaniel, remains at the level of loyalty that is expected between a man and his dog. It could be said that any woman who enters into a relationship with Coyne must compete with Henry, and always falls short by comparison as to her degree of single-minded devotion.

There is an interesting twist in ONE-WAY TICKET. It is so cleverly done that The Old Cobbler did not catch it while reading the book, even thought he had an advanced warning that it was coming. This twist leads one to suspect that Tapply wrote this book for those who publicly declare that if they do not get a dead body by page four, fourteen, or forty, they quit reading and throw the book against the wall. I can see the author with a sly grin on his face when this book was complete, saying, "Gottcha."

Virginia's Colonial Parkway

The Colonial Parkway is widely promoted as a journey through American history, from the first English settlement at Jamestown (1607) to the final battle in America's war of Independence at Yorktown (1781). It is not as widely promoted that the parkway itself is a monument to a design concept, perseverance, and engineering ingenuity.

It can be said the parkway concept grew out of the efforts of Connecticut native Frederick Law Olmsted and British born Calvert Vaux. They combined talents to design New York City's Central Park, America's first public park. This park, on which construction started in 1865, is an 843-acre park within a six-mile perimeter.

After this design, the partnership envisioned that a park could be more than a place to which people went. It could be linear, with a roadway included. People could enjoy the beauty of natural landscaping while traveling to a destination. This new concept was called a parkway.

The National Park Service turned to this concept in response to the idea of uniting what was called the nation's historic triangle: Jamestown, Yorktown, and Williamsburg, once the colonial capitol of Virginia, which was being recreated to its former glory through the financial support of John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

In 1930, survey and design work were begun to map out a 500-foot right of way, within which the roadway design would follow the established guidelines for a parkway and meet the NPS's prime objective "to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same."

Construction, which started in the spring of 1931, would become a three-part process. The link between

Williamsburg and Yorktown was completed in 1937, but because of the Great Depression, World War II, and funding delays, the last portion of the roadway would not be completed until 1957.

One of the challenging tasks was the 300-acre site where colonial era buildings, gardens, and streets were being recreated. It was determined that the most effective way to traverse the site was to build a tunnel beneath it. A construction method called cut-and-fill was used.

Building were temporarily relocated along the path the tunnel would take. A massive trench was dug, large enough to allow the construction of a 30-foot wide, reinforced concrete shell. Once the shell was complete, the massive trench was backfilled and the area above it restored to its previous condition.

Work on the tunnel was completed in 1942. World War II, plus flooding and other issues delayed its opening. The motoring public first used the tunnel in 1949.

Lack of funding delayed construction of the Williamsburg to Jamestown portion of the parkway until 1955. Once work started, the goal was to complete the effort before the 350th anniversary of Jametown's founding. The entire parkway opened for traffic on April 27, 1957.

The three lane, exposed aggregrate roadway, now an intergral part of the Colonial National Historical Park, have been recognized as one of the finest examples of parkway design in America. The parkway has a minimum of signs and roadway markings normally associated with modern highways. A speed limit of 45 mph is strictly enforced since the idea is that a drive along the parkway should be a leisurely endeavor. There is no better way to see the natural beauty of Virginia and experience the concept of a parkway than to drive the 23 miles of gently sweeping curves and hills between the James and York Rivers.

William Kent Krueger

During my pre-teen years, one of my favorite things to do each Christmas season was to wander the aisles of toys at the local Western Auto and let my imagination run wild, unrestricted by the reality that my weekly allowance of twenty-five cents would not buy anything I saw. The fantasy was that I could pick any toy I wanted and take it home to play with.

Decades later, my childhood fantasy is now a reality, except that the local library has replaced the Western Auto of my youth. I can wander the shelves, pick any book I want, and take it home to read. On occasion, one of these selections exceeds my wildest expectations. Such was the case when I brought home THUNDER BAY by William Kent Krueger.

In his own words, Krueger says "my books are about family ... values ... spirituality ... (and) ... the beauty of ... the great Northwoods of Minnesota." In THUNDER BAY, the seventh in a series, Krueger weaves all of these into another Cork O'Cconner mystery.

Ex-sheriff O'Conner, the holder of a newly acquired PI license, responds to a request from his friend Henry Meloux, an Ojibwe medicine man: find a son, now some 70 years old, that Meloux has never seen, except in visions. In THUNDER BAY, Krueger uses first and third person voices to tell two stories. While we follow O'Conner in his search for the son, we learn how Meloux fell in love and became a father.

The two stories become one when O'Conner and Meloux journey into the wilds of Canada to meet the son, a meeting that produces both tragic and happy results.

It's writers like Krueger that make the library a better deal than my childhood fantasy. There are seven more of his novels available through the library that I can bring home and read.

To read more about this award-winning author who has been called “the Michael Connelly of the Midwest” and his books, including THUNDER BAY, readers can go to bookreporter.com and the California Literary Review. Krueger is also a member of the Minnesota Crime Wave, a fun-loving trio of writers.

Mental And Physical State When Reading

Does a reader's reaction to a book and its characters depend on the readers physical and mental state at the moment?

I recently selected a book at the library based on its setting, a South Carolina island. I had not previously read a book by this author. The story started off with the main character being told by her husband, an unofficial private investigator, that he would be working a case, might be late getting home, but would call her. By 11:30 PM, the main character's anxiety about her husband, who wasn't home and hadn't called, was so far over the top that I put the book aside.

Later, when all other books from that library load were read, I resumed reading the book. This time, for whatever reason, I didn't find the main character's anxiety, which continued, to be a detracting factor. In the end, the book was a satisfying read. What made the difference between the two reads? I have not figured out the difference, but have learned that maybe any book that has made it into publication might deserve a second chance from the reader.