Past Tense: A Brady Coyne Novel Book

Penzler Pick, November 2001: William Tapply's Brady Coyne novels have long delivered meticulous plots and a strong moral sense, and Past Tense, the series' 18th entry, lives up to that solid standard. (Having for a time been Tapply's publisher, I speak both as a fan and as one familiar with his professionalism.) Coyne, a Boston attorney in private practice with a penchant for good-Samaritan trouble-shooting, is one of those mystery heroes in whom decency is perhaps the paramount characteristic. Liked equally by men and women, Brady usually manages to keep a level head when bad things start to happen, but always in a believable way. He sometimes gets things wrong, but that's okay because he'll usually find a way to sort them out. A steady intelligence is always present, and the reader increasingly appreciates the carefulness with which his creator regards the human condition: the relationships between men and women, parents and children, workers and their colleagues, the guilty and the innocent. Betrayal, above all, is something he seems to have made a special area of study. Past Tense opens as Brady and his current lady friend, Evie Banyon, are headed off to a Cape Cod rental for a long weekend's getaway. At a local seafood shanty, after a satisfying lobster feast, their idyll suddenly is shattered by an intrusion from Evie's past. Even after she has hauled off and slapped the insolent stranger staring at her from the bar (a man she accuses of having followed her there, much to Brady's confused astonishment), Brady doesn't expect to discover the fellow dead outside their cottage the next morning. The question soon becomes not "Who was the late Larry Scott?" but "Who is Evelyn Banyon?" This is a little too close to home as far as Brady is concerned, and it only gets worse when Evie disappears, seeming not to want Brady to find her. The answers to the baffling turn of events lie in Evie's past--and in Brady's desire to remain part of her future. --Otto PenzlerRead More