Boston Attorney Brady Coyne Tries to Save His Girlfriend from a Murder Rap

Although Brady Coyne, the protagonist in this series, is a Boston lawyer, these books are not really legal thrillers. Brady almost never sees the inside of a courtroom and actually dispenses very little legal advice. Rather, he seems to spend most of the time attempting to resolve the trouble that one or another of his clients has gotten into, and this almost always seems to involve solving a murder or two. Such is the case here, and in this instance, the case is very personal.

Brady is now dating a woman named Evie and takes her on a weekend vacation to Cape Cod. He's rented a secluded cabin and is planning a very romantic weekend. But on their first night there, Evie gets into physical altercation with a man whom she claims has been stalking her. The next morning, Evie goes out for a run and when Brady gets up a little later, he finds Evie out in the yard, standing over the body of her alleged stalker. The man has been stabbed to death with a knife from the kitchen of the cabin where Brady and Evie are staying. Not surprisingly, the cops tag Evie as their number one suspect in the killing.

Brady insists that, no matter the evidence, Evie could never kill anyone. But Evie doesn't help her situation much when she runs away and disappears. Brady now begins his own hunt for the killer, with the cops shadowing his every move in the hope that he will lead them to his girlfriend. But whether she's guilty or not, it's clear that some very strange things are going on here, and the deeper Brady digs into the case, the more confusing--and dangerous--it becomes.

This is one of the better books in what I think, overall, is a very good regional mystery series. By now the series characters have been well defined, and Tapply continues to demonstrate that he's a master at describing the physical setting. The plot is a good one, and this is a book that should appeal to a lot of readers who enjoy a good traditional mystery.