"Nervous Water", first of all, is a strange title, don't you think? When you place it within the local fisherman jargon, however, it makes perfect sense as it is a description of the rippling effect an experienced fisherman can detect when a large fish is about to surface. You learn something new every day.

Mr. Tapply's mystery story is built around interesting and sympathetic characters, in a Maine environment that is peaceful and self-contained and not noted for criminal acts of violence. The violence does insert itself, however, and Boston attorney Brady Coyne finds himself in the middle of it – right in his own family. This is not the usual "private investigator and lovely young assistant" kind of mystery. The leading character is a decent, hard-working lawyer who doesn't perform Super Hero actions or pretend to genius intelligence. He is down to earth, and practical: in other words, believable.

As for the story itself, from the first pages, one begins to feel that this is something that actually could happen, even in Maine. It isn't until the plot and its sub-plots begin to unravel that we understand just how many lives are involved, and how many dysfunctional families. I did say the characters are sympathetic, and they are, in spite of their various problems. Characters can be sympathetic and still have faults, and they can have faults and still be likeable. The story covers a broad range of dysfunction, actually, from unhappy wives, to rebellious off-spring, to disengaged cousins, cranky uncles, secretive aunts, and irresponsible mothers. They all have secrets, and those secrets smoothly come together to cause the event that is the subject of this book. Misdirection, errors in judgment, the telling of things better left untold, make it almost impossible for the reader to guess 'who dunnit' until the very end. It fooled me, too, I'm ashamed to admit, but it was good to find a rip-roaring mystery that doesn't reveal its solution without making the reader work for it.

I think this is a very good writer, this William G. Tapply, and I look forward to reading some more of his books. I think you'll like him, too.
Review by Litera Scripta