7 William G. Tapply Books That Will Have You on the Edge of Your Seat

Brady Coyne—in his thirties, divorced, attractive, and eating mainly out of cans—makes his debut in this Scribner Crime Novel Award-winning mystery published in 1984.

The Boston attorney is hired by the wealthy mother of an unassuming teacher whose body has washed up on the shore at Charity’s Point. The police believe the man, who taught at an elite prep school, jumped from a cliff, but his mother doesn’t believe it.

Coyne quickly comes round to her way of thinking. Death at Charity’s Point sets the tone for this wonderfully written and absorbing mystery series that calls to mind a softer-edged Earl Stanley Gardner.

Brady Coyne’s hopes of a romantic weekend on Cape Cod with his latest flame, Evie, are upset when they discover a dead body in the driveway of their rented cottage.

To make things a touch more awkward, it’s the corpse of Evie’s ex-boyfriend. When the local police turn up and immediately name Evie as their prime suspect, she makes a run for it.

Brady is left to deal with the situation. It quickly becomes clear that finding the real killer is his only option, since—in the absence of the woman they like for the crime—the small town cops are clearly thinking a smart alec Boston lawyer might do just as well instead. 

Our favourite Boston lawyer is at a low point in his life: his relationship with glamorous journalist Alex Shaw has hit the rocks, and one of his richest clients is asking him to defend his son, a boy who has killed two people in a DUI accident.

Brady Coyne offloads the case to a friend, the brilliant attorney Paul Cisek. Cisek puts up a dazzling defence and gets the killer acquitted.

Later, apparently tormented by guilt over his part in freeing a guilty and unrepentant young man, Cisek takes his boat out in a storm and disappears.

Did he take his own life? Brady isn’t sure, and his search for a definitive answer soon stirs up a whirl of trouble.

Brady Coyne’s twenty-seventh outing sees the Massachusetts lawyer’s past landing him in deep trouble. Ex-lover Alex Shaw suddenly reappears after years without contact.

She wants Brady to represent her brother—a celebrated photo-journalist whose traumatic experiences in Iraq have sent his life into a downward spiral—in his upcoming divorce.

A simple enough task until the brother is found dead in his rented apartment. It looks like suicide, but it’s all a little too neatly staged for Brady’s liking.

Soon he’s on the trail and in the sights of some very dangerous individuals—people who will stop at nothing to ensure that certain information never makes it into the public domain. 

Tapply was as keen a fisherman as Brady Coyne, and wrote books and magazine articles on his passion. Perhaps, it’s no surprise then, that another of his recurring protagonists is a Maine fishing guide, Stoney Calhoun.

Calhoun makes his debut in this gripping 2004 mystery that sees his idyllic life upended by the death of a friend and fellow fishing guide. Calhoun soon concludes that it’s a case of mistaken identity and that he was the intended target.

But who would want him dead? For Stony Calhoun that’s a tricky question to answer—his memory was erased by a lightning strike three years earlier.

Now he must piece his past together—however painful and disturbing that may be—to find the killer and save himself and those he loves.

Brady Coyne’s twenty-eighth and final outing sees our beloved hero caught up in a dark goings-on after an apparently pleasant drink in a hotel bar with a former neighbor, Ken Nichol.

However, that night Nichol is brutally slain in his bedroom, and the woman who discovers the body is his ex-wife.

Naturally, the cops immediately point the finger at the divorced woman. She promptly calls Brady and asks for his help.

As he searches for motives, Brady travels back in time to his days as a married family man in the leafy Boston suburbs and looks through this apparently perfect middle-class world for the darkness beneath.

Published shortly after Tapply’s death from leukaemia in 2009, this stand-alone political thriller is riven with action and suspense.

The novel features Vietnam War veteran Judge Thomas Larrigan, whose nomination for a place on the Supreme Court seems to everyone around him to be a great honour.

Larrigan may agree, but he also knows that the scrutiny that comes with the nomination could open the door on a closet packed with skeletons.

To make sure that the cupboard stays locked, Larrigan hires an old Marine Corps buddy to extinguish the evidence and those who hold it.