Shadow of Death
A Brady Coyne Novel
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Suspicious that his candidate's husband might be having an affair, the campaign manager convinces Boston attorney Brady Coyne to hire a discreet private investigator to find out what is really going on before the campaign itself is derailed. Brady is normally reluctant to get involved in this kind of domestic situation but the candidate is an old friend who has asked for his help personally. Hopeful that any odd turn of behavior will be easily explained away, Brady hires a former undercover cop turn P.I. to tail the possibly-errant husband.
What appeared to be a simple situation quickly turns deadly when Brady first gets a cryptic call from the P.I. and then the P.I. is found murdered in a car crash clearly staged to make it appear to be an accident. Since Brady is barred by attorney/client privilege from speaking to the police - and his client has refused to relinquish privilege to allow him to do so - he takes it upon himself to find out what has happened to the still missing husband and the people responsible for the murder of his colleague. From Boston's North End to the pastoral village of Southwick, New Hampshire, Brady's quest to uncover the truth leads him to face the deadly consequences of a decades-old tragedy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Tapply's 20th literate and engaging Brady Coyne mystery (after 2002's A Fine Line), the divorced Boston attorney, at a friend's request, looks into the odd behavior of Albert Stoddard, the husband of a woman who hopes to become the first female U.S. senator from Massachusetts. Suspecting that more than a simple distaste for electioneering may be behind Stoddard's withdrawal from helping his wife campaign, Coyne enlists a PI he knows, Gordon Cahill, to dig up any dirt and pull the poison before any scandal becomes public. The detective quickly, and suspiciously, turns up dead, the victim of a fiery apparent car accident. Guided by a few tidbits of information Cahill had provided, the lawyer again turns gumshoe and follows clues to a secluded New Hampshire cabin that Stoddard may have used. Soon violence and murder disrupt the simple life of rustic Southwick, N.H. Tapply excels at capturing the feel and pulse of a secluded and insular village. The eminently human Coyne, whose sleuthing is straightforward and plausible, struggles with his professional ethics as well as with relearning how to share a home with his girlfriend, Evie Banyon, who's recently moved in. While the whodunit aspect is a little underdone, there's clearly much life left in the series with its sympathetic and well-developed characters. and other Martha's Vineyard mysteries, on a novel, First Light.
