Tue 6 Jan 2015
Reviewed by Barry Gardner: WILLIAM G. TAPPLY – The Snake Eater.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[6] Comments
WILLIAM G. TAPPLY – The Snake Eater. Brady Coyne #12. Otto Penzler Books, hardcover, 1993. Minotaur Books, softcover, 2000, as one of three novels in Snake Eater/Seventh Enemy/Close to the Bone: A Brady Coyne Omnibus.
I’ve enjoyed Tapply’s stories of Boston lawyer Brady Coyne over the years. Evidently others have, too, judging from the series’ longevity and Otto Penzler snapping Tapply up for his new press. Though Coyne is a lawyer, it should be noted for those new to the series that these are not “lawyer” books, and that he really functions more as a private detective.
The book opens with a man whom we do not know being stabbed to death in a NYC subway. Then we shift to our hero Brady as he receives a call from his old friend in the Justice Department, Charlie McDivitt, asking him to defend a Viet Nam vet who has been busted for growing marijuana in his back yard.
It develops that the vet is a victim of Agent Orange poisoning and needs the evil weed to alleviate his symptoms. Coyne prepares for a tough case, but the charges are dropped unexpectedly, and no one is willing to say why. Then the vet is brutally murdered, and no one seems terribly interested in finding out why, or by whom — except, of course, Coyne.
Tapply does his usual job of smooth storytelling, and Coyne is his usual engaging self. There is a bit of middle-aged soul searching on his part as one of his relationships goes awry, which serves to deepen the characterization a bit.
The eventual resolution of the plot in its broad outline (if not all details) was discernible early on, as perhaps it was meant to be. It was not terribly credible to me, and the identity of the killer still less so. Tapply remains one of the better in the field in terms of readable prose, but I found this to be a distinctly minor effort. I wasn’t sorry I read it, but I wish there had been more there. He can do, and has done, better.
Editorial Comments: William G. Tapply was last mentioned on this blog back in 2009, at the time of his death. Included in that post was a complete bibliography for him. The Snake Eater was the 12th Brady Coyne novel out of 24, not counting three crossover outings with J. W. Jackson and Tapply’s fellow author and good friend Philip R Craig.
It has been over two years since one of Barry Gardner’s reviews has graced the pages of this blog. Other than the fact that some of the reviews I have access to cannot be scanned but must be re-typed from scratch, there has been no big reason for this.
For those of you who may not familiar with Barry Gardner, let me repeat my introduction to the first of his reviews to appear here:
I never met Barry myself. He lived in Texas, I lived in Connecticut. He attended mystery conventions, I seldom did nor have I since. But we were in DAPA-Em together, and we enjoyed each other’s reviews there, and swapped mailing comments there. We were friends, albeit through the mail and through each other’s zines only.
Barry worked for the Dallas Fire Department until his retirement in 1989, but he didn’t discover mystery fandom for another two years or so. Ah, Sweet Mysteries was the name of the zine that he produced for the apa, each of them running 20 pages or more. Besides his own zine, his reviews began popping up in all of the major, well-known mystery fanzines of the day: The Armchair Detective, CADS, Deadly Pleasures and many others. You name it, he was there.
Not only was he prolific, but he always managed to put his finger on what made each novel he reviewed work, or (in such cases) why it didn’t. Instinctively and incisively, he seemed to know detective and mystery fiction inside out. He had a critical eye, but he invariably used it softly while cutting immediately to the essence of a story.
Barry died in 1996 — suddenly, without any warning. George Easter, who still publishes Deadly Pleasures, almost immediately set up the Barry Awards in his name, to honor the Best in Detective and Mystery Fiction on a yearly basis. See George’s website for more information.
I’m pleased more than I can say that Barry’s wife Ellen has granted me permission to reprint Barry’s reviews from Ah, Sweet Mysteries on this blog. Thank you, Ellen, very much.
January 6th, 2015 at 11:24 pm
I have a cousin who was a chief in the Dallas Fire Department then, I’ll ask if he knew him, if he still remembers anything.
Liked Tapply and Coyne, mostly because I could drop in and visit and didn’t feel compelled to read every outing trying to keep up. They were by no means cozy, but there was a slightly laid back relaxed vibe to Coyne.
January 7th, 2015 at 12:18 am
I agree with your assessment of the Coyne books 100%, David. I never found them memorable in any meaningful fashion, but they were never less than enjoyable and fun. And no, Tapply’s stories were by no means cozy. They were men’s fiction, not the cozies that make up the majority of paperback mysteries now, in 2015. I may be wrong, but I don’t believe that the women who read the canned preserves and quilting bee mysteries so in fashion today would have any interest in Brady Coyne.
January 7th, 2015 at 12:24 pm
And when, we wonder, will paperback hard-boiled (not just noir) return? Soon, I hope!
January 7th, 2015 at 2:14 pm
Other than blockbuster airport-shop type thrillers, romance novels and cozies, mass market (small-sized) paperbacks have been all but eliminated, done in by ebooks, and probably permanently. Trade paperbacks are another matter, but distribution is spotty and you have to read a lot of mystery-oriented blogs to know what’s coming out and when — and if theyre worth the money.
January 7th, 2015 at 6:24 pm
Has it really been that long that Barry’s been gone? It hardly seems possible. He was a wonderful guy and a great friend, although I only knew him for a few years. Every year at the late, lamented Cluefest, the Dallas mystery convention, Barry would host a barbecue dinner at his house for a handful of friends. I attended several of them, along with Bill Crider, Marv Lachman, Richard Moore, Steve Stilwell, Bruce Taylor, and others I know I’m forgetting. Those evenings were the highlight of the convention.
Barry was the son of Bennie Gardner, a very prolific Western pulp author best known under the pseudonym Gunnison Steele. Sometimes when Bennie had multiple stories in an issue of some Western pulp, he would use Barry Gardner as a pseudonym. That happened a couple dozen times. Barry didn’t have much interest in Westerns, but he collected many of the issues with his dad’s stories in them. I wound up with that collection after Barry passed away, but then of course I lost them in the fire of ’08. I have a lot of pulps now, though, with Bennie’s stories in them, including some of the “Barry Gardner” stories.
Thanks for this post. As you can tell, it brought back lots of good memories.
January 7th, 2015 at 6:32 pm
As I said in my comments following the review, I never met Barry. I wish I had. Thanks for sharing your memories of him, James.