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William Tapply is an author whose work I've known for years. I've always felt he could tell a good story. I never exactly warmed to his series character Brady Coyne because he was just not someone I felt very comfortable with. Coyne was a little too smug, a little too pleased with himself and his life and for some reason that bothered me. But we all read books like that and Tapply is very skilled. I don't want to call him competent because that seems lukewarm; it's praise but it never comes across that way. He's better than competent, and in today's world, competence is hard to find. Too many authors create cardboard cut-outs speaking wooden dialogue while plodding through plots that are seriously unbelievable or overly complicated and messy. Tapply writes good fiction. His newest GRAY GHOST is a find. It's the second in a new series featuring Stoney Calhoun who bears some surface resemblance to Coyne (and maybe to Tapply himself) but stands out as a convincing, sympathetic and non-gimmicky creation. This character could have been anything but that as he's a man dealing with a serious and real problem – amnesia – which is too often a joke or faked in our world. Tapply's written a true-to-life guy dealing with a disconcerting situation and he's written it well. Tapply does a very fine job with Calhoun, making him seem real and not laughable, not blown up or out of proportion. His amnesia is something he deals with every day without anyone screaming "look look!" (I have more than a little trouble with the American television show Monk where someone with a condition lets it not only rule his life, but it's also a constant Huge Deal to everyone around him. It's my experience that you can't live like that.) The story is straightforward, well-paced and intriguing. While taking someone out fishing near a tiny island, Calhoun and the client discover a body. A burnt body. The next day, he sets up a fishing trip with a stranger. The client is a no-show until he shows up at Stoney's cabin, dead. This is all pretty baffling for Stoney Calhoun but not completely. While he does not remember his life before five or six years ago, there are things he does know. And that's both helpful and frustrating. The story also involves Calhoun's relationship with a married woman, and it's not the most original theme I know of but it still works and gives dimension to the people and the place. There are things Calhoun can do, without knowing how he knows, but he's in a very puzzling place. What I like is that Calhoun and his friends and acquaintances seem to cope without making a big fat deal out of it. It's weird, a guy with amnesia, but it's not earth-shaking, end of the world major stuff. Life goes on, apparently and they all try to work with it. I'd like to be more encouraging than I am about this book – without a doubt I recommend it, but I can't hide that I was at times bored. See, Calhoun and his creator are deeply interested in something that I cannot find the slightest spark of interest in nor glimmer of curiosity. Fishing is, to me one of the top ten, no sorry, five most boring topics I can think of (others include golf and probably hunting) so any mention of it in a novel doesn't sit well with me. Tapply doesn't take up huge blocks of time with it but it's there, woven through and very much a part of his protagonist's everyday life and how he relates to people. There's tie-flying discussions and lots of names of fishing flies and lures and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. It's not just to be skipped over, but if you can't drum up interest, it makes you yawn. I've read lots of books that have some theme that doesn't interest me, but few bore me the way fly-fishing does. Tapply is one of mystery's more articulate authors when it comes to discussing craft and genre. But I cannot come up with a scintilla of interest in the passion for any part of fishing that he and his protagonist show in this book. I just wanted it to go away so I could read the book.
Reviewed by Andi Shechter, May 2007
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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