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Family secrets and emotional hangups dominate the comfortably satisfying 25th and final Brady Coyne novel from Tapply (1940–2009). When Sharon Nichols finds her veterinarian ex-husband, Ken, stabbed to death in a suburban Boston hotel room, she phones Brady, a former neighbor of the couple, who rushes to the scene. As Sharon's lawyer, Brady tries to redirect police suspicion away from his client by exploring the victim's entanglement in selling date-rape drugs while juggling bad debts. To put it mildly, Brady discovers that Ken and Sharon had a less than idyllic personal life. While trying to help the emotionally fragile Sharon hold herself together, Brady must also sort out his prickly relationship with his son and cope with the moods of his own current lover. Convincing characters and a pleasant New England setting enhance a genuine play-fair mystery, despite several false leads.

—Publisher's Weekly

Reading William G. Tapply’s 25th Brady Coyne novel, “Outwitting Trolls,’’ the last one written before his death last year, is a potent reminder of how much the tall, gentle guy with a passion for the outdoors, fishing, dogs, and the women in his life will be missed.

It opens in tried and true mystery fashion with Brady sharing drinks in a hotel bar with an old friend. He hasn’t seen Ken Nichols since Ken divorced his wife, Sharon, closed his veterinary practice, and moved to Baltimore 10 years earlier. Sketched in a few vibrant brush strokes (“Ken had big ears and a meandering nose and a mouth that was a little too wide for his face. He grinned easily, he loved animals’’), Ken is on the page, back in town for a conference, and clearly in some kind of trouble.

He and Brady part ways, agreeing to keep in touch, but of course that is not to be. Soon Brady gets a call from Ken’s ex-wife, calling from a room in the same hotel as the bar. She needs a lawyer, she says. Ken is there in the room with her, and he’s been stabbed to death.

The storytelling feels effortless, and Tapply braids the story of Brady’s prickly family relationships with a murder that might involve unfinished family business. The ending ties together the disparate pieces and leaves Brady in a “a good place,’’ as it will the reader.

So pull up an Adirondack chair on the back porch of Brady’s Beacon Hill townhouse, crack open one last Sam Adams, or pour yourself a shot of Jack Daniels, and enjoy the sun setting with a great mystery writer, in fine form up to the end.

—Hallie Ephron, The Boston Globe