Chris Knopf
1) Dead Anyway
Imagine this: You have a nice life. You love your beautiful, successful wife. You're an easygoing guy working out of your comfortable Connecticut home. The world is an interesting, pleasant place. Then in seconds it's all gone. You're still alive, but the world thinks you're dead. And now you have to decide. Make it official, or go after the evil that took it all away from you. Arthur Cathcart, market researcher and occasional finder of missing
...When market researcher Arthur Cathcart emerged from a coma and set out to track down whoever murdered his wife, the results were far from pre-ordained. Wounded and alone, grief-stricken and hiding off the grid, he thought the only mystery was who killed Florencia, and why? But the quest for justice uncovered a host of fresh mysteries, just beginning with an elaborate fraud and embezzlement scheme, complete with dummy corporations and off-shore
...3) Black Swan
Sailing back from Maine, Sam Acquillo, his girlfriend, Amanda Anselma, and screwball mutt Eddie Van Halen get blown off course by a dangerous gale. With damaged boat and frayed nerves, they limp into the closest harbor, which happens to be on Fishers Island, New York, a distant and altogether disassociated scrap of Long Island.
A summer preserve for the oldest old money in America, it is defended by year-round denizens who safeguard their
...4) Cop Job
It's bad enough when someone you know is brutally murdered; it's worse when the guy was a paranoid schizophrenic helplessly bound to a wheelchair. Sam Acquillo and Jackie Swaitkowski tried to look after Alfie Aldergreen, as had others around the Village of Southampton, but now they were forced to wonder what else they could have done.
One thing is for certain, Alfie's killers are about to know what it means to murder a friend of Sam—former
...5) Back Lash
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
...Smart-aleck attorney Jackie Swaitkowski's business relies on constant movement of Hamptons' real estate market. After making an odd request to evict his sister-in-law from his home, one of her clients turns up dead. Jackie would have expected that to be the end of it, but an envelope found on the corpse contains an item so unusual that Jackie finds herself working on something bigger—and more dangerous—than real estate.
A routine visit to one of Sam Acquillo's job sites becomes anything but. The home's owner, Victor Bollings, is lying in a pool of blood, the back of his head bashed in. One of Sam's closest friends in the cabinetry trade is quickly behind bars as the obvious suspect. For the cops, this is all standard operating procedure. But as it turns out, nothing about the case is routine, obvious, or standard in any way.
Sam and defense attorney Jackie
...8) Deep Dive
Sam Acquillo has spent most of his time in the Hamptons hanging out with the other half of the moneyed wonderland cops and bartenders, carpenters, store clerks, and firemen. He couldn't care less about the concerns of the 1 percent, until his best friend Burton Lewis, a certified billionaire, is dragged into a high-profile death investigation.
A former corporate superstar brought down by the machinations of the grasping class, Sam's not entirely
...Sam Acquillo is at the end of the line. A middle-aged corporate dropout living in a ramshackle cottage in Southampton’s North Sea, Sam has abandoned friends, family, and a big-time career to sit on his porch, drink vodka, and stare at the Little Peconic Bay.
But then the old lady next door ends up floating dead in her bathtub, and it seems that Sam is the only one who wonders why. Despite himself, burned out, busted up, and cynical, the ex-engineer,
...10) Head Wounds
Sam Acquillo can hide in his windswept waterfront cottage all he wants. The demons of his past are going to find him. Worse, they've teamed up with some pretty nasty demons of the present.
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,
...Sam Acquillo is getting to be a lot more sociable. People are constantly dropping by, including guys in black outfits with .45 automatics breaking into his cottage in the middle of the night.
Though on doctor's orders to stay clear of violence and mayhem, Sam does what's needed to encourage a candid conversation with the home invader, with surprising results. It seems a person important to the private life of a very important person has
...12) Two Time
Sam Acquillo—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, he is drawn into the investigation.
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