William Tapply's Latest Brady Coyne is 24th Book in the Series' 24-Year History

The latest offering in William Tapply’s Brady Coyne series, HELL BENT is, in The Old Cobbler’s opinion, the best effort to date in the series. Reading the book left me with the thought that the development of the Brady Coyne character has a lot in common with Gordon & MacPhail’s Dallas Dhu 24-year old Single Malt Scotch.

The first book in this series, DEATH AT CHARITY’S POINT, was released in 1984. Tapply has written 23 more books in the series⎯one book every year since Ronald Reagan was re-elected President, and Apple introduced the Macintosh computer with the now famous television commercial.

These 24 years of Tapply’s devotion to developing the series and its main character has produced a finished story that approaches the reader’s palate with a subtlety and complexity that puts it on the level of the single malt scotch.

Part of this subtlety is in the way Tapply paints word pictures, far different from some of his peers. James Lee Burke inserts vast, detailed landscape murals into his story lines. He does an excellent job. They make you want to pull off the road, stop, and look around for a while. Tapply accomplishes the same goal with only a few words.

One example: Brady Coyne is driving out of Boston to see a client. “It was another postcard New England autumn day. The maples and oaks along the Esplanade glowed in shades of gold and orange, and the sun glittered off the Charles River.” The reader gets the picture without slowing down.

The book’s opening is a simple one, belying what comes later. Brady is in his office. It’s late afternoon. He’ sitting and looking out the window. “The low-angled late-afternoon October sun was washing the tops of the Trinity Church and the Copley Plaza Hotel with warm orange light, and dusk was beginning to seep into the floor of the city.”

A visitor arrives in his office unannounced. A former lady friend, Alexandria Shaw, walks back into his life after seven years. She wants him to help her older brother who has been kicked out of his house by his wife who has filed for divorce.

This older brother was a photojournalist, freelancing in Iraq where he lost his right hand, came home with post-traumatic stress disorder and a totally screwed-up outlook on life. Waving a pistol in his family’s face had been the final act that bought him his one-way ticket out the door.

Brady agrees to take the case, if the brother wants representation. When the brother accepts, Brady is happy. That means he and his former lady friend will be seeing more of each other, which may be a good thing. Brady’s not certain.

His uncertainty stems from the fact that his last lady friend, Evie Banyon, had co-habituated with him in his townhouse until leaving four months earlier to tend to a dying father in California. Since her leaving, the two have not run up large phone bills. Brady is beginning to have questions.

His questions are answered a few days later when he receives a letter from Evie. She doesn’t mess around with any off-speed pitches in the letter. Her Dear John message is like a fastball from Pedro Martinez on the mound at Fenway Park. It’s down the middle of the plate, heart-high, for a called third strike, the last out of the game. Coyne doesn’t argue the call with the ump. He tries to put the game out his mind.

Alex is back in his life, old flames are rekindled, and Brady still has his two most ardent and dependable supporters. He has an obedient canine, a Brittany named Henry David Thoreau, and Julie, his secretary and the secret weapon that keeps her boss on the list of Boston’s well-paid lawyers. That does not mean a chorus is going to break into song, with a melodic rendering of “Autumn in New England.”

This is a Brady Coyne novel. As we who are regular readers have come to know there’s a big shoe out there, ready to drop. This is Brady Coyne. His stumbling into troublesome situations is more of a frequent problem than is his stumbling through relationships with women.

The serenity and tranquility of the New England autumn is shattered when Alex’s brother is found dead in his apartment, a gun shot to the head. The official ruling is suicide. But Alex does not agree. She says her brother would not kill himself, and asks Brady to help find out what really happened. He agrees, not that he fully shares her doubts, but sees it as a way to keep their renewed relationship going.

From this point, the story takes on the quality of the bottle of Dallas Dhu Single Malt. On the surface it’s a story of lawyer Brady talking to people, many of them war veterans, asking them questions, getting pieces of answers.

Brady receives a phone call from a man who speaks in what seems to be code. The man promises to call again. But he is murdered before he can call. This brings in Brady’s long-time friend from the state police, Inspector Roger Horowitz.

And the FBI shows up. In his sleuthing, Brady has unknowingly met a man wanted on federal charges for blowing up buildings back in the 1970s. The bomber had gone underground, changed his name, and the feds’ last picture of the man is over three decades old.

Brady helps develop an up-to-date image of the man he saw, which confirms it’s the wanted bomber. Collectively, the good guys guess correctly as to what the bomber’s next target will be and prevent the second shot heard round the world.

But underneath these daily events of murder and mayhem, the reader sees, through Brady’s eyes, a subtler, more complex side effect of war. He meets former soldiers and civilians, who have been scared mentally as well as physically, some in Iraq, others as far back as Vietnam. Many of them are misunderstood, except within their mutual support groups.

Some of these mental scars have warped logical thought, leading to illogical decisions as to how feelings about war should be expressed, how far actions can be taken to express these feelings. And Brady learned that at least one individual had a rather complex idea as to who should die and who should live. He remained alive to learn this truth.

It’s a story that also makes it clear that drastic actions are sometimes necessary to stop desperate individuals who have lost all sense of the value of life, both for themselves and anyone else in range of their planned violence.

And it’s a story in which Brady begins to ask himself questions regarding his relationships with women, and begins to maybe see some answers. But this does not mean he will stop playing the game; taking his turn at the plate, ready to swing at the right pitch.

Tapply’s photo in this post was taken by his wife Vicki Stiefel, also an award-winning author and very accomplished photographer.

Sandi Ault's Third Book in Wild Series Scheduled for Release in March, 2009

Mark your calendar. March 2009 is the release date. The presses are rolling on WILD SORROW, the third book in Sandi Ault’s award-winning series featuring Bureau of Land Management agent Jamaica Wild and her wolf companion, Mountain.

Those readers who think authors sit at their computers and do all their research via the Internet should take a look at the photographs taken of Sandi and her real-life companion, wolf Tiwa, to see how these two do research.

The setting for WILD SORROW comes from the trip into the remote and rugged Four Corners area, which included a visit to the Chacoan Outlier ruins, and an ancient Puebloan ruin of an abandoned Indian School.

The school became part of the inspiration for WILD SORROW. Sandi says, “The site … intrigued me. I felt haunted by the sadness I felt around the place.

I continued my research into Indian Boarding Schools through the Internet, reading books, studying government documents, and especially through interviews with Native Americans who had survived the schools. This was a sad and stirring process.”

The mountain lion was another cornerstone of inspiration. Again Sandi, “This species, a former resident of nearly this entire continent, has been extirpated in all but five of the lower continental United States.

And even there, its survival is threatened by the push of development and loss of habitat. I felt that the theme for both Native culture and the mountain lion was at least similar, if not identical.”

So weave the two together, set the story in winter, and what will the reader get? Sandi offers the following as a “sneak peek.”

“While tracking a wounded mountain lion onto a desolate canyon rim, Jamaica and her wolf, Mountain, come across an old Indian School, a place where children were “Americanized” after being taken from their homes. As a snowstorm sweeps the canyon, Jamaica is forced to take refuge in the abandoned school. As she explores her impromptu haven, Jamaica discovers the desecrated body of an elderly Anglo woman, frozen on the floor.

This discovery, combined with the obviously troubled history of the abandoned school, haunts Jamaica throughout the night with the sorrowful howling of the icy wind. After the storm, the FBI takes over the murder investigation as Jamaica continues to search for the wounded she-lion and her cubs. As the dead of winter settles on the mesa, arctic temperatures threaten the survival of the mountain lions—and Jamaica herself, as she is stalked and terrorized by the unidentified killer…”

Readers who do not want to wait can find a sample offering of Chapter One, which has been posted on-line.

Lisa Unger's Latest Novel, BLACK OUT, Takes Readers on a Bizarre Journey

Bizarre might not be a word that comes to mind when looking for a word to describe a book, but it’s the one that came to mind after reading Lisa Unger’s BLACK OUT. But "strikingly out of the ordinary," a definition for bizarre is a perfect fit for the book.

The Old Cobbler thought he had been at the reading game long enough to not devote time to finishing a book that was not an enjoyable exercise. But I finished reading this book. Did I enjoy it? I cannot call the experience enjoyable. Then why did I stick with it until the final page?

Why does a crowd gather to watch a person standing on the roof edge of a tall building and threatening to jump? Why do people rush to the water’s edge to stand and watch when a swimmer is caught in a rip tide, screaming for help while being washed out to sea, beyond help, and facing almost certain death by drowning?

Anyone who understands human nature well enough to explain this behavior trait maybe can take a stab at an explanation as to why I did not put this book down in spite of the fact I fought the urge to quit reading at several points.

So, what is the story told in BLACK OUT? On one level, it seems as simple as the blurb on the front fly of the dust jacket. It’s about Annie Powers, who is living the dream life, in a wealthy Florida suburb with a husband and a daughter, both of whom she loves dearly.

But “the bubble surrounding Annie is pierced when she senses that the demons from an ugly past are gaining on her quickly, triggering frightening⎯and unwanted⎯memories of someone she used to be.”

The reader is not an observer, reading along to see what happens next in Annie’s world and how she handles things. The reader is pulled into Annie’s psyche, not to be told things but to share her life on a visceral level.

The reader only knows what Annie knows, or thinks she knows, or does not know, as she struggles to make sense of the people in her life, the things going on around her and her memories of fragments, or maybe figments, of a past life, past loves and past crimes.

The reader lives the confusion that Annie lives, not knowing what is real, imagined, dreamed, actually experienced, fantasized, flashbacks, or present happenings. The reader has no more of a clue as to what is going on than does Annie.

And in the end, does Annie survive? Does she find safety and peace? The appearance of a safe life is presented, but there is a caveat. Annie tells the reader. “The truth is that I may never be fully able to discern between the actual events⎯or people⎯in my recent life and the dreams created by my psyche to heal myself.”

It strikes The Old Cobbler that’s what we all do to some extent. We let our psyches build our havens and create dreams that keep us healed and safe inside.