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Summary
Summary
Finalist for the 2005 Ben Franklin Awards. "Tapply is . . . a worthy successor to Hammett and both MacDonalds (Ross and John)." -Chicago Tribune. " Only a few writers of crime fiction have managed to generate prose this leanly poetic in the service of their hard-boiled stories. Tapply does it all the time." -The Boston Globe. William G. Tapply has created a fresh new world in BITCH CREEK, a steamy, perfectly crafted mystery introducing Stoney Calhoun, an unlikely hero. Stoney is a man without a past. A lightning strike obliterated his memory, and, as so many might like to do, he was given a chance to completely reinvent himself. That's not an easy task when a man doesn't know the slightest thing about himself. But Stoney was driven by some current within and ended up as a fishing guide in Maine. He's reeducating himself, he's in love, and life is good-until his friend and fellow fishing guide is murdered and Stoney suspects that he himself was the target. In a riveting process of revelation, Stoney begins investigating the murder and learns to his surprise that he is, in fact, a trained investigator. The process of discovering the murderer is also a process of self-discovery. Tapply has introduced an unlikely, yet intensely likeable protagonist. He has fashioned an ingenious plot simultaneously unfolding layers of personality and intrigue in his stunning new novel.
Author Notes
William G. Tapply was born in Waltham, Massachusetts on July 16, 1940. He graduated from Harvard University in 1963. He wrote more than 40 books during his lifetime including the Brady Coyne mysteries series, the Stoney Calhoun Novel series, and numerous non-fiction books about fly fishing and the outdoors. He was also a contributing editor for Field and Stream, a columnist for American Angler, and part of The Writer magazine editorial board. He was an English professor at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts and ran The Writers Studio at Chickadee Farm with his wife Vicki Stiefel. He died on July 28, 2009 after a battle with leukemia.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The reliable Tapply introduces a new series with a real page-turner set in rural Maine. Stoney Calhoun, "a man without a history," lost his memory in a lightning strike five years earlier. Soon after the accident, Stoney left a rehab hospital in Virginia with a $25,000 check in his pocket from an insurance settlement, drove "Downeast" to live in seclusion along the eponymous creek of the title and began work at Kate Balaban's bait and tackle shop. One morning he foists an unsavory customer planning a wilderness trip onto Lyle McMahan, a local college student and fellow guide, and neither is seen again until Stoney finds Lyle's body floating in an alder swamp with a bullet in his belly. Gnawed by guilt over Lyle's murder, Stoney, with his faithful spaniel, Ralph, searches remote villages, farms and woodlands for his friend's killer, and while doing so, finds clues to his own mysterious past. Tapply's down-to-earth style provides an uncomplicated plot with striking descriptions of Maine's wildest topography, though a far-fetched and excessively violent resolution spoils the rustic mood. Tantalizing questions about Stoney's previous life remain for a future installment. Agent, Fred Morris at the Jed Mattes Agency. (Sept. 24) FYI: Tapply's most recent novel in his Brady Coyne series is Shadow of Death (Forecasts, Sept. 8, 2003). (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
After 20 cases starring Boston lawyer Brady Coyne (Shadow of Death, 2003, etc.), Tapply introduces a more outdoorsy, elemental Down East detective. Stoney Calhoun knows he was named after Stonewall Jackson and grew up in Beaumont, South Carolina, but he doesn't know much else about his past. A lightning bolt, if that's really what it was, left him deaf in one ear, unable to drink alcohol, and pretty much devoid of memories before a stint in the veterans' hospital that ended when he followed an obscure sense that he was being called home to rural Maine. Moving swiftly to put down roots, he got a job in Kate Balaban's bait-and-tackle shop and commenced the world's most discreet affair with his boss, unmolested except by the occasional inquisitive emissary of Uncle Sam. All that changes the day Fred Green, a blowhard from Key Largo, appears in Kate's looking for a guide. Disliking him on sight, Stoney palms him off instead on grad student Lyle McMahan, then suffers the tortures of the damned when both men disappear and Lyle turns up dead. Despite Kate's protests, he insists on helping York County Sheriff Dickman with his slow-moving investigation and ends up endangering himself and everyone he's closest to. Though the mystery is slight and the windup unsatisfying, it's wonderful to see Tapply get out of the city and into an altogether different kind of time that suits his unhurried storytelling perfectly. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Ostensibly the victim of a lightning strike, Stoney Calhoun is a man without a past, or at least a past he can remember. Fleeting memory snippets draw him to rural Maine, where he builds a home by the curiously named Bitch Creek. Time passes, and he becomes close to a small circle of friends in the community: fishing guide Lyle, police chief Dickman, and Kate Balaban, owner of a fish and tackle shop who becomes Stoney's sometime employer and sometime lover. When Stoney finds Lyle dead, after referring a guide job to him, he begins to poke around the case, trying to figure out what happened and why. The more Stoney delves into the incident, the more he comes to realize he was a cop of some sort in his unremembered life. He also learns he has the capacity and training for violence and intimidation. As in his long-running series starring quixotic Boston lawyer-sleuth Brady Coyne, genre veteran Tapply mixes crisp plotting and character development with a subtle sense of time and place. This has the makings of a fine new series. --Wes Lukowsky Copyright 2004 Booklist
Library Journal Review
In this new series by the author of the Brady Coyne series (Shadow of Death), Stoney Calhoun works in Kate Balaban's bait/tackle shop in small-town Maine but has gaps in his memory after five years in an institution. When mutual friend and fishing guide Lyle goes missing, Stoney searches, finding the man's "secret" trout stream and the man himself suspiciously drowned. Lyle's client, meanwhile, has disappeared. Aided by determination, logic, a psychic vision or two, and Kate's love, Stoney discovers that he was the intended target and that he's really an experienced investigator. Featuring Tapply's trademark prose, a sensational plot, and a well-grounded protagonist, this should appeal to his fans as well as readers who enjoy outdoor mysteries. Tapply lives in Hancock, NH. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.