by James Brady
“This best-seller about the Gloucester fishing boat that goes down, The Perfect Storm, is good stuff,” Anderson said. “Same kind of men as your Baymen, I imagine. A slice of America people in the great cities, sitting down to a fish dinner in a first-rate restaurant, never pause to consider. I thought of asking Peter Matthiessen to do the story. He’s out there, knows the territory.”
“You could do worse. He’s very good,” I said. “Very.”
“So are you,” Anderson said, “and you’re under contract and he isn’t. I prefer to use the writers we’re paying already.”
That made sense. And who ever said editors considered only the words and not the dollars?
And so that was how a pout on the part of a famous actress who’d lost her boyfriend sent me slinking back to New York unfulfilled. And almost as an afterthought, got Anderson to give me an assignment that, without his intending to do so, would entangle me with Cowboy Dils and whatever demons pursued him.
Not something Anderson expected or I sought. But reporting was the work I did and so it was I found myself getting my bags packed for East Hampton. Anderson was probably right; with the good weather, there was nothing to keep me in the city, and the beach and ocean beckoned. The Baymen idea might work, could be a fine story. They were hard, wonderful, colorful men working a difficult, often dangerous trade. I was already getting enthusiastic about it; I’m that way about a good story. I get worked up, get excited; show me a writer who doesn’t feel that way and I’ll show you a cynic. Or a burnt-out case. Besides, our house out there stood empty and available, my father, the Admiral, having been seconded by the Pentagon (by the defense secretary himself) to a liaison job at NATO headquarters in Brussels.
“But you don’t even like Brussels.”
“I know, Beecher,” he acknowledged, “but I can’t just say no to Bill Cohen. He’s a decent man and he called personally and I’m going.”
The Admiral wasn’t enthusiastic about the post, or the place, but for forty years since Annapolis, his had been a career in which you saluted and went, finding along the way small consolations. So he reminded himself, as the French are fond of saying: “One eats well in Brussels.” Thus dismissing the neighbors, as the French are wont to do, with faint praise, and, like Caesar, not all that fond of Belgians, the Admiral shut down his (and my) house on Further Lane, and off he went.
I had additional small consolations as well. East Hampton would be relaxed and casual. It was a place where tradition still meant something; you could go to the bank on that. The Hamptons were traditionally pretty tranquil until the Season began and that would be Memorial Day at the earliest and nothing could possibly happen until then.
Or so I believed …
EVERYONE IS RAVING ABOUT JAMES BRADY’S
FURTHER LANE!
“Everybody in the Hamptons is reading FURTHER LANE … The hunt for the killer is fast-paced and unpredictable. Readers will also delight in the author’s take on the ceaseless class wars in the Hamptons—a subject Brady, a resident, has long been watching with evident amusement.”
—Town and Country
“As witty, erudite, and on the cutting edge as its author, James Brady’s FURTHER LANE is a lot of fun and ‘must’ reading for everybody in the Hamptons set—and all those who aspire to be.”
—Michael Korda, Senior Vice-President and Editor-in-Chief of Simon & Schuster
“James Brady moves easily between fact and fiction, building composite personas in FURTHER LANE. Finding the celebrities as well as solving the crime is part of the fun of this who’s whodunit.”
—Rochelle Udell, Editor-in-Chief of Self
“Brady combines his novelistic talents with his status as a bio-coastal insider to deliver the goods in this entertaining, fast-moving yarn.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Dry humor, literate tone, acid observation, and lots of name-dropping help characterize the village and its people.”
—Library Journal
“Readers get taken on a Liz-Smith-meets-Agatha-Christie murderous romp through the celeb-studded hedges of East Hampton.”
—Hamptons Magazine
“An always-stylish romp through the playgrounds of the very pampered and vaguely famous.”
—The Purloined Letter
JAMES BRADY is a weekly columnist for Advertising Age and Parade magazines. His previous novels include Paris One and Designs, and he is author of the critically acclaimed memoir of Korea, The Coldest War. He lives in Manhattan and on Further Lane, in East Hampton, New York.
FURTHER LANE
Copyright © 1997 by James Brady.
Excerpt from Gin Lane copyright © 1998 by James Brady.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-53927
ISBN: 0-312-96598-2
St. Martin’s Press hardcover edition published 1997
St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / June 1998
St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
eISBN 9781466841901
First eBook edition: March 2013
