Past Tense: A Brady Coyne Novel
Penzler Pick,November 2001:William Tapply's Brady Coyne novels have  long delivered meticulous plots and a strong moral sense, andPast 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 Tenseopens 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 Penzler