Chris Knopf

Sam Aquillo—ex-boxer, ex-corporate executive, and accidental hero of The Last Refuge—can't seem to stay out of trouble. All he really wants to do is hammer a few nails into his ramshackle cottage, drink a great deal of vodka, and hang out with his dog, Eddie. But when a car bomb outside a trendy waterfront restaurant kills a prominent financial consultant, injuring Sam and his lawyer friend, Jackie, he is drawn into the investigation. Where the...

Sam Acquillo is at the end of the line. A middle-aged corporate dropout living in his dead parents ramshackle cottage in the Hamptons, Sam has abandoned his friends, family and a big-time career to sit on his porch, drink vodka and stare at the Little Peconic Bay. But when the old lady next door ends up floating dead in her bathtub it seems like Sam is the only one who wonders why. Burned-out, busted up and cynical, the ex-engineer, ex-professional...

An organizational psychologist must discover who murdered his boss to clear his own name.

Jackie Swaitkowski investigates the death of a female pilot who had a family tree filled with ex-cons and a passenger list packed with Hamptons high society. Just before Eugenie Conklin's plane took a nosedive, she tossed out a camera case that held an unusual set of photos. While defending Eugenie's husband during the accident investigation, Jackie realizes that she recognizes more than a few of the faces in those pictures. They may be able to prove...

This sixth in the Sam Acquillo Hamptons Mystery series brings back Knopf's ensemble of famously eccentric and involving characters, not the least of which is Sam's mutt Eddie Van Halen. Combining beautiful watery settings with a unique look into the underbelly of the Hamptons, these are mysteries you won't find anywhere else.

Peel back the glamour of the fabled Hamptons and you'll find a beautiful place filled with ugly secrets. This is Sam Acquillo's world. Moving effortlessly across the social divide with wry pal Jackie Swaitkowski and rich guy Burton Lewis, the ex-boxer, ex-corporate infighter seems doomed to straddle the thin red line between envy and love, hate and forgiveness, goodness and greed—and sometimes, life and death. Part-time carpenter, full-time drinker...

Gwendalynn Anders, a mid western girl who's never seen the ocean, wonders what was in that joint she smoked a week before waking up on Elysiana and why it feels like the trip will last the entire summer of 1969. Jack Halcyon, living atop an abandoned twenty-story hotel, wonders how he's able to ponder the incongruities of life after leaving a big chunk of his brain at the scene of an accident. Borough Council President Norman Harlan wonders what cruel...

As Sam Acquillo tells us in the early pages of Back Lash, "Not everyone gets to live their adult lives orbiting a central mystery." But that's how it's been for Sam, whose entire existence has been defined by a single, horrific event. Now that event has reached out from the deep past, an unwanted visitor, and Sam is forced to unpack, like a Russian doll, secrets within secrets, each more ominous than the one before. What is revealed would be disturbing...