Boston Attorney Brady Coyne Goes Fishing with His Uncle Moze. Trouble Ensues.

It's always a bit surprising to open a book that's around the twentieth in a series and suddenly discover a family and a backstory of the protagonist that you've never heard before. William G. Tapply's previous Brady Coyne novels (this is the twenty-first or the twenty-third, depending on how you're counting) have always focused on Coyne in the present day. There's been no mention of any family aside from his ex-wife, his two sons, and the various girlfriends he's had along the way.

Now we suddenly learn that Brady's father was also a Boston lawyer. Unlike Brady who has a small, quiet solo practice and who flies mostly under the radar, his father was a high-powered lawyer in a large firm who drove a big, black Cadillac apparently in the hope of impressing people. Brady's mother came from a small town in rural Maine and occasionally the family would jump into the Cadillac and drive up for a visit with his mother's brother--Brady's uncle--Moze.

The young Brady loved these excursions because Uncle Moze was a lobster fisherman who would take Brady out fishing with him. But then, for whatever reason, they fell out of touch and Brady hasn't seen Uncle Moze for thirty years. Not only that, but as much as he loved fishing with him, through twenty-three novels, Brady hasn't given the poor old guy even a single thought!

But never mind all that. When Uncle Moze calls Brady out of the blue, thirty years down the road, and asks him if he wants to come up and go fishing, of course Brady is only too happy to do so. He realizes, of course, that Uncle Moze has a reason for inviting him up, and it turns out that Moze is unable to contact his daughter, Cassie, Brady's cousin. Cassie is several years younger than Brady, and he barely remembers her.

Cassie and her father were once very close, but then had a falling out for reasons that Moze won't get into. He hasn't heard from her in a year and a half and is anxious to contact her, also for reasons he won't get into. He wants Brady to find Cassie and put them back in touch. It seems like a relatively easy task for a lawyer like Brady, but of course, it won't be easy at all. Mysteries, family secrets, and danger abound as Brady takes up the hunt.

It's always fun to settle in with one of Tapply's novels and this is among the better ones in the series. The reader can't help feeling a bit blindsided by all the information that Tapply has withheld for so long about Brady's origins, but you can't hold that against a guy who produces a book as entertaining as this one.