Part of Series
Boston attorney Brady Coyne has just received a call from Jimmy D'Ambrosio, a Democratic party kingmaker and acting campaign manager for prosecutor Ellen Stoddard, who's running for a Senate seat. She's got a real shot at becoming the state's first woman to hold the post, except for one her husband Albert, a college professor and Brady's occasional fishing partner, has been acting strangely, and now he's disappeared altogether. D'Ambrosio wonders if Albert's having a romantic dalliance with a coed, or if some other scandal is threatening to break. Either way, the campaign can't be involved, so he wants Coyne to investigate and keep any threatening skeletons locked firmly away in the closet. But after Coyne uncovers evidence of a murder, D'Ambrosio claims client-attorney privilege and threatens to have him disbarred if he leaks a word of the case to anyone. But Brady refuses to drop the case, and follows the trail to the little town of Southwick, New Hampshire, where an idyllic façade hides a terrible secret. And as the campaign draws to a climax, it seems that Brady Coyne has just been elected most likely to be the next to die.
Author
William G. Tapply (1940–2009) was an American author best known for writing legal thrillers. A lifelong New Englander, he graduated from Amherst and Harvard before going on to teach social studies at Lexington High School. He published his first novel, Death at Charity’s Point, in 1984. A story of death and betrayal among Boston Brahmins, it introduced crusading lawyer Brady Coyne, a fishing enthusiast whom Tapply would follow through twenty-five more novels, including Follow the Sharks, The Vulgar Boatman, and the posthumously published Outwitting Trolls. Besides writing regular columns for Field and Stream, Gray’s Sporting Journal, and American Angler, Tapply wrote numerous books on fishing, hunting, and life in the outdoors. He was also the author of The Elements of Mystery Fiction, a writer’s guide. He died in 2009, at his home in Hancock, New Hampshire.
