From Publishers Weekly
In his reliable, rewarding series featuring middle-aged Boston lawyer Brady Coyne, Tapply combines intelligent plotting with consistent, fully dimensional characterization and prose that flows as easily as the trout streams Coyne loves to fish. In his 14th case (following The Seventh Enemy), Coyne recommends Paul Cizek, a fishing buddy and a defense attorney with a reputation as a miracle worker, to defend a client's son involved in a fatal DUI rap. Cizek takes and wins the case, but privately explains to Coyne how his victories are eating at him. He detests the people he is defending?the child molester, the Mafia hit man and now an unremorseful alcoholic. When Cizek, depressed and separated from his wife, disappears and his empty boat is found drifting in a storm, the police assume accident or suicide. But Coyne's investigation, undertaken at the behest of Cizek's wife, and accruing dead bodies suggest more sinister possibilities. As Coyne searches the wreckage of his friend's life for clues, his own deepening relationship with journalist Alexandria Shaw also faces a crisis. Tapply treats his characters and his readers with respect, and the result is another winning entry in a very satisfying series.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
A midlife crisis for Brady Coyne? Not Brady, the affable, paper-pushing lawyer who deals with boredom by fishing and investigating the occasional murder. Brady usually solves his friends' crises, midlife or otherwise, and that's how this latest adventure begins: first, he finds a criminal lawyer, Paul Cizek, to defend a client's son, whose drunk driving has resulted in an innocent woman's death. Then he searches for the disappeared lawyer, who is presumed dead after failing to overcome his own midlife crises, precipitated by the innocent verdict he secures for the clearly guilty drunk. Meanwhile, Brady must decide whether he is willing to disrupt his comfortable life to be with his friend and lover Alexandria, who is moving from Boston to Maine. Tapply rarely varies the successful formula of his Coyne novels, but this time, he adds several extra layers of expertly constructed plotting as well as some remarkably insightful musing on the tricky matter of changing one's life. A fine entry in a consistently entertaining series.
Bill Ott
