Brady
Coyne - Lawyer in Boston, Massachusetts
 "Client
Privilege"
 Brady
Coyne is one of those low-key, nice guy lawyers (really) that drafts wills
and other paperwork. His clients tend to be rich white men and women that
provide him with nice retainers and in return he's there when they need
him. His best asset is his ability to keep a secret, legally known as
client privilege. As the story opens, Honorable Chester Y. Popowski's,
called "Pops" for short and a friend since college, is being
nominated to the Federal District Court. Coyne is also Pops' lawyer since
"even judges need lawyers." Everyone knows that to be nominated
as a Federal Judge your slate has to be very clean - that's American politics
and Pops seems to be the cleanest, most noble human being that has walked
this earth.
Well almost
perfect, as it turns out there is one little matter that Pops needs Coyne's
help with. Someone is bringing up the name Karen Lavoie from his past.
While Pops admits that something did briefly happen between them when
he was an Assistant D.A., it isn't anything to keep him from the bench,
maybe from President, but not the bench (OK this was written in 1990....).
He says that he doesn't want to have any of this get out since "the
qualifications for being a husband are much more stringent than those
for being a judge." Coyne volunteers to meet with the mysterious
caller that seems to want something from Pops at this most inopportune
time in his career. Sometime later in the evening AFTER Coyne publicly
meets the "blackmailer," the man is found murdered and Coyne
seems to be high on the suspect list. Due to client privilege, he can
not help himself anymore than he can help the police with this case. Worse
he's beginning to think he might not really know Pops.
This is one
of those quick read mysteries that's a pleasant page turner and moves
along without revealing "whodunit" until the final pages. I
truly enjoyed the Boston aspect of the novel and especially like his reference
to his fishing buddy Doc Adams. At the end of
my copy are the first pages of The Spotted Cat. This excerpt was
interesting enough that I would have kept reading it until the end if
the whole book had followed. While not heavy on the intellectual side,
this author does have some good casual insight and humor and would make
any of his books a good vacation read. (Reviewed
6-21-99)
(back to top)
Bibliography (with
links to Amazon.com):
Brady Coyne
Mystery Series:
|
William
G. Tapply was a Lexington High School teacher and housemaster until 1990.
Since 1992 he has been an editorial associate for the Writer's Digest
School. He currently teaches at Emerson College and Clark University
and continues to write. His first Brady Coyne mystery, Death at Charity's
Point, won the 1984 Scribner Crime Novel Award. Tapply is also a contributing
editor to Field and Stream magazine and is a noted writer on fishing and
the outdoors. He lives in Harvard, Massachusetts. He has three adult children.
