Boston lawyer Brady Coyne has a client list that consists almost exclusively of wealthy elderly people from Boston's Upper Crust, and when he's not off fishing somewhere, the bulk of his work lies in drawing their wills and planning their estates. For an attorney who has such an apparently quiet practice, though, Coyne does seem to find himself in the middle of a lot of murder cases.Given that, when Brady's phone rings at two o'clock in the morning, the news is probably not going to be good. On the other end of the line is one of those wealthy clients, a retired Unitarian minister named Desmond Winter. Winter has already had more than his fair share of bad luck. Seventeen years ago, his wife took his daughter and left him, promising to be back at some point. Ultimately, his daughter returned, but his wife never did, and Winter has no idea what became of her. Her loss haunts him still.
To further complicate Winter's life his ne'er-do-well son, Marc, went off and married a stripper named Maggie. To his surprise, though, Desmond becomes quite fond of his daughter-in-law and then one night she's found naked and beaten to death on the family's boat, hence the phone call at two in the A.M. Naturally, the husband, Marc, is the principal suspect, especially since he was observed near the scene at the time of the killing and has no apparent alibi. Desmond wants Brady to protect his son's interests and before long the whole thing spirals into a very messy and dangerous affair.
This is another very good addition to the series. It's a clever plot that moves swiftly along. Brady Coyne remains a plausible and attractive protagonist, and the rest of the characters are pretty interesting as well. Although nearly thirty years old at this point, the book has aged well, and the reader is only occasionally pulled momentarily out of the plot when someone has to go searching for a pay phone rather than simply pulling out their iPhone or some such thing. All in all, a fun read.
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