MUSCLE MEMORY

Can things get any worse for retired basketball player Mick Fallon? Two months after the pair of North End godfather Vincent Russo’s enforcers he tossed out of a sports bar vow revenge, Mick asks Brady Coyne, who’d helped him escort the enforcers outside, to handle his divorce. It’s not money he worries about, he tells Brady; he just wants his wife Kaye to come to her senses and take him back. But Mick’s got plenty of reasons to worry about money, as Brady discovers when Kaye’s predatory lawyer hints that the gambling debts Mick’s been covering up for years are going to allow Kaye to take him to the cleaners. Can things get even worse? Yes, much worse, especially after Kaye is murdered and the cops come looking for Mick. His hair-trigger temper, lack of alibi (a helpful neighbor places him on the scene), and obvious motive (Kaye’s life insurance is just one more plus) have Lt. Roger Horowitz licking his chops as he phones Brady advising him to bring his client in. But it’s too late for that; Mick has disappeared, leaving only a shattered fishbowl behind. Has Mick gone into hiding? Have Russo’s goons caught up with him? Or is he on the trail of the real killer himself? Brady’s 16th (Cutter’s Run, 1998, etc.) is stylish, routine, just a little bit synthetic: a spot of fishing, a tender scene with a returning lover, the odd clue.