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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9781416532569
ISBN number: 1416532560
Label: Scribner
Manufacturer: Scribner
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 336
Printing Date: December 04, 2007
Publishing house: Scribner
Sale Popularity Level: 55986
Studio: Scribner
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Product Description:
Eminent mystery authors Philip R. Craig and William G. Tapply team up for a richly nuanced new installment in the Brady Coyne/J. W. Jackson series that is a tribute not only to two witty, smart fictional sleuths but also to the enduring friendship of their creators.
It's late August, just when thousands of vacationers on beautiful Martha's Vineyard are preparing to go home so the kids can return to school. There's a problem, though. A union has gone on strike, paralyzing the Steamship Authority, which runs the ferries to 'America,' and creating panic and anger among many tourists and islanders alike.
When an explosion destroys a boat's engine room and kills the striker who apparently planted the bomb, J. W. Jackson, once a Boston cop but now an island man-of-all-work, reluctantly agrees to the widow's pleas that he endeavor to prove her husband innocent of the crime. As J.W. begins inquiries, he discovers a complex series of relationships among strikers, scabs, and boat owners, and encounters violence of his own.
Meanwhile, Boston attorney Brady Coyne gets a call from a former client now living full-time on the Vineyard, who tells him about a group of armed men loading and unloading mysterious crates at a dock at midnight. Jackson and Coyne get together and discover that not only are their cases connected but that time is running out for them to prevent a crime that could have international ramifications -- and their only hope will be to confront dedicated killers face-to-face....With its winning contrast of page-turning suspense and evocative Vineyard ambiance, Third Strike is crime fiction at its best.
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Rated by buyers 
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J. W. Jackson is used to having his wife Zee pushing him to stay out of the deaths and other mysteries that occur on Martha's Vineyard. But, this time, when Eduardo Alverez is killed by an explosion in the engine room of the car and passenger ferry Trident, Zee feels differently. Eduardo may have been a striker but he was also by all accounts a quiet, hard working devoted family man who had no enemies. While the ferry strike continues unabated, Eduardo leaves behind a wife and child full of pain and heartache. Daddy isn't coming home and the police seem to have decided that since he was a striker, he was planting a bomb that just went off earlier than intended. With a little nudge from Zee, J. W. Jackson gets to poking around in the case.
It also doesn't take much convincing to get J. W. to help his old friend Brady Coyne. Coyne is a Boston attorney who has been contacted by one of his clients. The client also lives on Martha's Vineyard and has witnessed strange happenings in the middle of the night at an isolated dock. Men with automatic guns, large crates, and small boats running without their lights seem to indicate trouble but the nature of the trouble is unknown.
Coyne and Jackson begin poking around separately and soon find that their cases are linked. It leads them on a wild chase and a thrilling, though totally unbelievable climax, at one of the island's airstrips.
This is the fundamental problem with this novel. Since this is the third joint book, as well as the latest in a long series by each author, one does not expect sudden character revelations or some abrupt shift in character development. These are well established characters with long histories that aren't about to change. One does expect the plot to make sense. Especially with regards to terrorism these days and it doesn't come close.
Instead, the novel relies on a Hollywood B movie style ending in the big climax that just doesn't work. As such, any reader mildly aware of anything the last few years is apt to lose all suspension of disbelief. Savvy readers may find themselves laughing uncontrollably or launching the book across the room in a fit of annoyance. Either is possible and somebody should have addressed the issue long before the book saw print.
One wonders if this is a case where the author's prestigious names and body of work overruled any editorial considerations regarding the logic of the ending. Or maybe somebody thought Hollywood, where bad guys miss despite emptying clip after clip at the hero, will come calling with their big bucks. Either way, what up until the end had been a fairly good read, was destroyed by ludicrous sheer implausibility.
The authors can and usually do better. It is sad that this time that didn't happen.
Kevin R. Tipple (copyright) 2008
Rated by buyers 
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I am sad that Philip Craig passed away last year. Not only do I LOVE all his JW Jackson books, but he and Bill Tapply had a really great set of books started. This is book 3 and, sadly, the final one in this short series. But, I love and own them all, and can't wait for Phil's upcoming JW book to be published this June. Thank you Phil and Bill, for all the wonderful hours I have spent with your two heroes.
Rated by buyers 
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A traditional admonition of grandmothers is that if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. I generally follow this practice, and don't post many book reviews. But I am making an exception for this book, since I feel that the authors and editor abused readers by the obligation to suspend disbelief in the final chapters and resolution of the plot.
I open a book with willingness to suspend disbelief for the hook, the setup, and whatever else is necessary to gain my interest. If the sacrifice is too much for me then I don't read the book. After I've completed the very first third I allow authors to spring surprises but not to jerk me around.
In "Third Strike" the protagonists ultimately discover a plot by evil doers to murder a former U.S. President. This worthy is arriving on a private jet aircraft which will land on Martha's Vineyard. A cache of surface-to-air missiles is discovered. This discovery is shared with local constabulary. There follows a wild skirmish to shoot all the widely- scattered bad guys with hand guns, before a SAM can be fired.
Oh dear. In real life the proper action is to communicate with the FAA, with air traffic control, with the FBI and the US Secret Service. There was quite sufficient time to report the danger and divert the aircraft elsewhere. In my opinion it was the editor's job to say "readers aren't going to buy into this".
I put the book down after reading 80 percent of it and felt that my time had been wasted. Sadly, "Third Strike" was my very first and last book by Mr. Tapply, although I am confident he is a nice person and academic. Fans and other readers will be far more forgiving than I am, but somewhere out there is a mystery reader with a steel trap mind who deserves a heads up. To that individual, I suggest taking a pass on this one.
Rated by buyers -
This J. W. Jackson mystery lived up to Philip Craig's excellent writings. Loved the suspense and mystery all through the book.
Rated by buyers -
In this, the third entry in the Brady Coyne/J.W. Jackson adventures, after the earlier "First Light" and "Second Sight," Brady has been called to Martha's Vineyard, where J.W. presently makes his home. Larry Bucyck, a client who he hasn't heard from in years calls him when he fears his life is in danger, and implores Brady to help him. J.W.'s help is enlisted when the steamship strike on the island has idled the ferries which are virtually the only way to get to the island from what they term America [i.e., the mainland].
J.W. has his own problems: His wife, Zeolinda ["Zee"], has prevailed upon him to investigate the death of her friend's husband, who is believed to have died while trying to blow up the engine room of a boat, all part of the growing tensions arising from the strike. It soon appears that two men have died from seeing what they should not have seen, and being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It is not apparent at very first in what manner these two threads will come together, but the reader knows it will happen at some point and in some way as the book progresses. The tale moves at a measured pace, unhurriedly, much as life itself does on a summer's day in Martha's Vineyard, I imagine, and with equal pleasure.
The authors alternate chapters with their respective protagonists moving the plot along, Mr. Craig's JW Jackson, the former Boston cop and Vietnam vet, happily married after ten years and with two young children. The steamship company has till now been the only viable lifeline between the Vineyard and America; now men are using their own boats, making two, three trips a day, ferrying eight cars at a time, and it was just such a boat that was destroyed in the attempted torching which resulted in the man's death. There are others who are making good money during the strike, ferrying people and cars and freight night and day, for whom the strike is a boon. Meanwhile Brady, who describes himself as a wills and estates lawyer from Boston and a trout fisherman, must find out who killed his former friend and client, who he describes as a "shy, private guy, living like Thoreau down there in the Menemsha woods. He said he just wants to be left alone," an innocent enough man who had managed to find a simple life on his own. Had indeed "carved out a little Walden for himself in a patch of woods on Martha's Vineyard, how he raised chickens and pigs...how he built stone sculptures that I guessed would stand there for eons, the Stonehenge of future generations..." The island at the moment is inundated with "pilgrims who came seeking the Promised Land, found it, and now can't leave because of the strike. The gods are Jesters." "The island cops were already stretched thin by the strike and by Larry Bucyck's murder, to say nothing of maintaining law and order among 100,000 August people who were rowdier than usual because they didn't like being trapped, even though they were trapped in Eden."
It would appear that the very first man's death wasn't a suicide and that moreover there is a plot afoot with very sinister implications which Brady's client may have stumbled upon. These two authors, who were also great friends with a common love of the natural world, fishing and the Boston Red Sox, have put together a seamless, well-written and suspenseful book, with the personalities of their protagonists blending into a well-oiled machine that gets done that which it must, never losing sight of the women they love or their love for the beauty of their surroundings and their fishing. The writing is wonderful. Mr. Craig's J.W., at the end of a tense day, waiting for Mr. Brady to return: "'I imagine Brady's fine,' I lied. I felt I was on the lip of the Void, ready to fall. We sat close together in the fading evening light and looked out over the gray waters of Nantucket Sound where the sailboats were easing toward harbor under the low dark sky. In spite of the sultry summer heat, the earth seemed without form, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. What had become of Brady?" And Mr. Tapply's Brady, confronting one of the `bad guys: "Harry Doyle ignored me. He hunched his shoulder, squinted his eye, peered through the sight on his weapon, and tracked it across the sky above us like a skeet shooter wringing on a high-flying clay pigeon."
I particularly enjoyed J.W.'s query to Mr. Brady: "Maybe we can bring Stoney Calhoun down from Maine. He's as good as [Sam] Spade." Brady gave me a blank look. "Who's Stoney Calhoun?" "I'm not absolutely sure, and neither is he." Calhoun is, of course, another uniquely Wm. Tapply creation. These words by Mr. Craig particularly spoke to me: "Above us, the innocent blue sky held clouds whiter than newborn lambs, and the sun shone down onto a world that should have been devoid of murder." Sadly, it is a voice we will hear no more. That is the last collaboration between these two esteemed writers, and the ... Read More
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