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Summary
Summary
In one of the finest novels yet in Tapply's long-running series, Nervous Water explores the previously hidden past of his much beloved character, Boston attorney Brady Coyne. Contacted by an aged relative with whom he'd long lost touch, Brady agrees to help his Uncle Moze with a sensitive family matter. Having received a diagnosis of terminal cancer, Moze is looking to mend fences with his only daughter. But the daughter seems to have simply disappeared, leaving no clues or hints as to her whereabouts. As Brady tackles the seemingly impossible task of finding his cousin - a case that looks less and less like a simple missing person case - it becomes clear that whatever is going on now is related to a dark, undiscussed episode in his family's past: the brutal, still unsolved murder of another of Brady's uncles.
Author Notes
William G. Tapply was born in Waltham, Massachusetts on July 16, 1940. He graduated from Harvard University in 1963. He wrote more than 40 books during his lifetime including the Brady Coyne mysteries series, the Stoney Calhoun Novel series, and numerous non-fiction books about fly fishing and the outdoors. He was also a contributing editor for Field and Stream, a columnist for American Angler, and part of The Writer magazine editorial board. He was an English professor at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts and ran The Writers Studio at Chickadee Farm with his wife Vicki Stiefel. He died on July 28, 2009 after a battle with leukemia.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Boston lawyer Brady Coyne tackles family troubles past and present in his compelling if slightly wordy 21st solo outing (after 2003's Shadow of Death). Coyne agrees to help his Uncle Moze, an aging Maine lobsterman, find Moze's daughter, Cassie, who hasn't been returning Moze's phone calls. Cassie's unfriendly new husband, dentist Richard Hurley, confirms her disappearance. Hurley isn't particularly forthcoming, perhaps because, as Coyne learns, both of his previous wives died under less than clear circumstances. An attack on Moze in his home and Moze's subsequent heart attack add urgency to Coyne's search. The murder of Cassie's former lover, English professor Grantham Webster, ups the ante. Meanwhile, Coyne's girlfriend, Evie Banyon, also seems to be hiding something. As ever, Tapply's strength lies in his convincing characters and dialogue, but on occasion he goes off on tangents, such as a mediation session between a divorcing couple. Still, this long-running series remains fresh and Tapply underrated as one of today's finest regional mystery writers. Agent, Fred Morris at Jed Mattes. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Fans of Boston attorney Brady Coyne know plenty about the easygoing lawyer-sleuth's lifestyle: not much work, lots of fishing, good meals at Boston's finest restaurants, and the occasional murder case, whenever one of his friends finds a spot of trouble. What we don't know is much about Brady's past. That changes dramatically in this twenty-first installment of the long-running series. A phone call from Brady's uncle Moze, an avuncular lobsterman in rural Maine, sends the citified nephew on the road to reestablish ties after a 30-year hiatus. Diagnosed with terminal cancer, Moze hopes to set things right with his estranged daughter, but he needs Brady to find her. The trail leads to other relatives on Brady's mother's side of the family and to what well may be a murder case. Tapply tackles the difficult issues of human relationships and family ties with his typically light touch, always underplaying the big moments but ever sensitive to nervous water --a fishing term for the look of the ocean when a school of fish is about to strike. Another winner in an always-satisfying series. --Bill Ott Copyright 2005 Booklist
Kirkus Review
Boston lawyer Brady Coyne's search for a missing cousin brings him up against murders past and present. Among all Brady's memories of fishing with his mother's Maine relatives, one stands out: the discovery of the body of Norman Dillman with a bullet hole in his head. Norman was the abusive pipe fitter/petty criminal who'd married and shamed Brady's Aunt Mary. Now, a generation later, Mary's brother Moses Crandall, Brady's favorite uncle, phones him out of the blue to invite him up to Maine for some get-reacquainted fishing. Moze wants more than a good catch and a nice chat, of course; he's looking for Mary and Norman's daughter Cassandra, whom Moze and his late wife Lillian had raised as their own. A year ago, Moze registered his disapproval of Cassie's new fiancÉ, a dentist old enough to be her father, and she responded by cutting all ties to him. Now that she's Mrs. Richard Hurley, she doesn't answer her phone, and the dentist offers nothing but bland promises that she'll call back as soon as she can. Eventually, Brady figures out why Moze is suddenly desperate to get in touch with her, why she won't respond and what's happened to her. But Brady never does clear up the coincidences behind the trail of homicides that shadow Cassie or explain why he's recycling a crucial plot twist from a dozen novels earlier in this laid-back series (Shadow of Death, 2003, etc.). Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Excerpts
Excerpts
NERVOUS WATER (Chapter One)One The end of a muggy Thursday afternoon in early July. Thunder grumbled from the direction of the western suburbs, and the air hung still and heavy and moist over the city. I'd shucked off my courtroom pinstripe, slipped into a pair of cutoffs and a T-shirt, and made myself a tall gin and tonic, and I was sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs in the walled-in patio behind our town house on Mount Vernon Street reading the Globe sports section and waiting for Evie to come home. Henry David Thoreau, our middle-aged Brittany spaniel, lay under the picnic table with his chin on his paws eyeing a pair of evening grosbeaks, which were jabbing at sunflower seeds on one of the hanging birdfeeders. I'd finished my drink and was pondering a refill when I heard the kitchen phone ring. I figured it was Evie. She was a little late. When I stood up, the grosbeaks burst away in a bright flash of yellow and black. "Sorry about that," I said to Henry, who'd lifted his head and was frowning at me. Brittanies are bird dogs. Their genes carry the powerful instinct to point grouse and woodcock and quail for the hunter. Poor Henry, the city dog, had to be satisfied with grosbeaks and finches and titmice. When I answered the phone, a gravelly voice said, "Hey, sonnyboy." Only one person ever called me "sonnyboy." I hadn't heard that voice for over thirty years. But I recognized it instantly. "Moses Crandall," I said. "Jesus Christ. What's up, Uncle Moze?" "Just wonderin' how you'd feel about helping me haul my pots." I heard him take a wet drag on a cigarette. "Maybe go fishin' afterwards. Stripers're in the river. Gittin' some blues, too. They ain't gonna hang around much longer." "Is everything all right?" I said. "Why the hell wouldn't it be?" "Well, okay, good," I said. "When did you have in mind?" "Saturday okay with you?" he said. "Git here around noon, we'll catch the turn of the tide." "I'll be there," I said. "Your boat still moored in the same place?" "Same river, same mooring, same boat," he said. "Mostly the same string of pots. Nothin' much changes, sonnyboy. We just keep gittin' older. See you then." I was back out in the Adirondack chair when Evie came out through the back door a half hour later. She bent down, hooked her forearm around the back of my neck, and gave me a long juicy kiss on the mouth. She'd snagged a bottle of beer from the refrigerator on her way through the kitchen. She flopped down in the chair beside me, pried off her high heels, propped her feet up on the table's bench seat, hiked her skirt up to the tops of her thighs, and pressed the bottle against her cheek. "Hot one, huh?" she said. "It's not so much the heat--" "Yeah, yeah," she said, "it's the damn humidity," completing the hoary New England cliché. "Thunderstorm brewing," I said. "You can smell it." She looked up at the sky, where dark clouds were roiling. "No doubt," she said. "I love thunderstorms." "Tough day?" "Budget crap." She waved the subject of budget crap away with the back of her hand. Evie was an administrator at Beth Israel Hospital. She worked a lot harder than I did. "How 'bout you?" "I had the MacPherson suit today. We settled in the lobby a half hour before the hearing." "That's good, huh?" "This time it was." I took a sip of gin and tonic. The grosbeaks had not returned, but a couple of chickadees were flitting back and forth between the lilac bush and the feeder with sunflower seeds in their beaks, and three or four goldfinches were perched on the thistle-seed feeder. Henry had taken up a position beside Evie's chair and was pretending to ignore the birds. Evie's arm dangled down and she was scratching the top of his head. She was slouched in the chair with her eyes closed. "Looks like I'll be heading up to Maine on Saturday," I said. "What's up?" "I got a call from my uncle. Uncle Moze. Moses Crandall. My mother's brother. Lives in Moulton, just over the New Hampshire border. He wants me to go out on his boat with him, help him tend his lobster pots. Maybe we'll try to catch a striper." "Sounds like fun." Evie took a sip of beer and looked at me over the bottle. "I don't remember you ever mentioning your uncle Moses." "I haven't seen him for over thirty years. When I was a kid Uncle Moze used to take me out on his lobster boat. He was my favorite uncle." She looked up at the sky. The dark clouds were thickening, and the air had become noticeably cooler. "I think you're right about the thunderstorm." I smiled. "Of course I'm right." After a few minutes of comfortable silence, Evie said, "So why now?" "Hmm?" "Why after--what, thirty-odd years?--why is it today that your uncle invites you to go lobster fishing?" "That," I said, "is the question. Did I ever tell you about when I was a kid and we found my Uncle Norman's body floating in the river?" "You never talk about your childhood, Brady." "Well, what do you want to know?" "Everything." My mother grew up in the village of Moulton on the estuary of the Piscataqua River in southernmost Maine. Her name was Hope. Jacob and Moses were her older brothers. Uncle Jake and Uncle Moze. My mother had three sisters. Faith, Charity, and Mary. Mary was the baby of the family. My grandparents apparently ran out of virtues by the time they got to Mary, so they named her after a virgin, which turned out to be pretty ironic. Gram Crandall had white hair and a large bosom and smelled like violets. She is, in my memory, a kind of mythic presence, sweet and gentle and beloved by everybody. I associate her primarily with the aroma of corn chowder and warm apple pie and boiled new red potatoes doused in butter and sprinkled with parsley. My grandfather worked for the paper company running pulp on the Kennebec River. He died in some kind of accident when I was four or five. I have no memory of him. My mother was the only one in the Crandall family who actually left home. Her sisters married local boys and settled right there in Moulton. Her brothers chased the local version of the American Dream, which was owning their own lobster boats. My mother was the rebel. She went to college in Massachusetts, taught seventh-grade English, and married Alan Coyne, who was a lawyer with a big firm on State Street. All of that made my family members objects of awe and suspicion among my aunts and uncles and cousins and their neighbors in Moulton, Maine, and probably accounted for the fact that we didn't visit Gram Crandall more often. Except for Mary and Moses--Uncle Moze--I didn't know my aunts and uncles very well. Faith and Charity were younger, more nervous, less loving versions of my grandmother. Uncle Jake pretty much ignored me whenever he was around. Uncle Moze was my favorite. He was strong and independent and profane, the closest thing to a New England cowboy that you'd meet in those times thirty-odd years ago. He was the only uncle who paid any attention to me, actually. He seemed to enjoy having me on his boat, maybe because he didn't have kids of his own. Uncle Moze gave the impression of being taciturn, but when he was in the mood, he loved to tell long, ironic stories. They involved colorful Maine characters he'd presumably known--poachers and drunks and adulterers, mostly--and it flattered me that he didn't censor his stories because I happened to be there. To me, going lobstering with Uncle Moze was another kind of fishing. We chugged around the broad tidal river spewing diesel fumes, and he and my old man snagged the buoys with the boat hook, looped the thick line around the power winch, and hauled up the pots. I liked anticipating what we might find inside the big wooden lobster pots. It wasn't that different from seeing my bobber start to jiggle on my neighborhood millpond back in Massachusetts and wondering what kind of fish might've eaten my worm. I was seriously hooked on fishing of all kinds when I was a kid. In those days, lobsters were abundant, and Uncle Moze's pots generally came up crawling with them. He wore rubber gloves that came up to his elbows, and he groped around inside the pot, came out grasping a lobster around its middle, and quickly measured it with his steel lobster ruler. He threw the shorts overboard. The keepers went into tubs filled with seaweed--those with both claws, which Uncle Moze sold to a wholesaler in Kittery, in one tub, and the unsalable ones with a missing or deformed claw, which he kept for himself or gave to Gram, in the other. My job was rebaiting the pots. For bait Uncle Moze used pollock and haddock minus their fillets but with the heads still attached that he got cheap from the wholesaler he sold his lobsters to. I liked digging my hands around in the tub of smelly fish skeletons and stabbing them through their eye sockets onto the metal hooks inside the wooden pots. I liked how I smelled fishy for several days afterward. Most of all, I liked the fact that Uncle Moze, unlike my old man, made me feel useful. That's why he was my favorite uncle. Two months after we found Uncle Norman floating in the Piscataqua River, Aunt Mary gave birth to a girl. She turned the baby over to Uncle Moze and his wife, a quiet little woman named Lillian who, my mother once told me, couldn't have children. It was Lillian and Moze, not Aunt Mary, her actual mother, who named the baby Cassandra. Aunt Mary lived with my grandmother until the following spring, when she hooked up with a boy from Portland who'd just been drafted by the Detroit Tigers. She followed him to someplace in Iowa where he'd been assigned to a minor-league team, and that was the last I heard of Aunt Mary. Cassandra, her baby, stayed in Moulton, Maine, with Uncle Moze and Aunt Lillian. My grandmother moved to Florida a year or two later, and after that my family stopped going to Moulton, and I pretty much lost track of the Crandall side of my family. They never did figure out who plugged Uncle Norman in the forehead. They questioned a lot of people, but nobody had seen anything or had much to say. Forensics, such as they were, weren't much help. His body had been in the water for quite a while. Or maybe they just didn't try very hard. Nobody had much tolerance for a beer-bellied drunk who'd break his pregnant wife's arm and punch her face and kick her out of their trailer. Anyway, it turned out that Norman Dillman had plenty of enemies. He'd been transporting more than lobsters and fish on the boat he kept moored over in Kittery, and he owed a lot of money to some shady people in Boston. The consensus in the Crandall family was that all in all, things hadn't turned out so bad. NERVOUS WATER Copyright (c) 2005 by William G. Tapply. Excerpted from Nervous Water by William G. Tapply All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.