Protecting his clients, however undeserving, brings lawyer Brady Coyne (Out Cold, 2006, etc.) up against Boston’s Russo mob once more.
The three guys who beat up Dalton Lancaster didn’t say they were sent by Vincent Russo to give the compulsive gambler a warning. But Brady, Dalton’s old law-school roommate, goes to talk to the North End crime boss, figuring that if Russo didn’t order the smackdown, he knows who did. A couple of days later, three thugs grab Brady from a parking garage and haul him off to see Paulie Russo, Vinnie’s heir apparent. The debt, it turns out, is owed not by Dalton but by his son Robert, who seems to have inherited both his dad’s addiction to poker and his lousy luck. What Russo wants is not money but the sympathetic ear of Robert’s grandma, Superior Court Judge Adrienne Lancaster, who’s set to hear a case involving Russo interests. Tipped off by Brady, Her Honor recuses herself. Next thing you know, she receives a CD showing Robert bound in duct tape and a note demanding $250,000—to be delivered by none other than Brady Coyne. So Brady goes home to drink beer and wait for two calls: one from the kidnappers, one from his girlfriend Eve, who’s abandoned her longtime lover to share her terminally ill father’s last months.
Sometimes rhapsodic, sometimes redundant descriptions stretch a thimbleful of plot into a six-pack.
