Sam Acquillo Hamptons Mystery Books

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 boxer, ex-loving father and husband finds himself uncovering secrets no one could have imagined, least of all Sam himself. Meanwhile, a procession of quirky characters intrudes on Sam’s misanthropic ways. A beautiful banker, pot-smoking lawyer, bug-eyed fisherman and gay billionaire join a full complement of cops, thugs and local luminaries in this tale of money and murder.

The New York Times Book Review Sunday, June 4, 2006 CRIME / Marilyn Stasio (Recommended Summer Reading) Beaches are good places for brooding, you’ll have noticed, and Sam Acquillo, the protagonist pf Chris Knopf’s TWO TIME (Permanent Press, $26), is a world-class brooder. A dropout from the corporate world, Sam lives in a humble cottage on Little Peconic Bay in the Long Island resort town of Southampton, where he drinks a bit, fiddles with his 1967 Pontiac Grand Prix and from time to time pulls himself out of his habitual funk to run a quiet, intelligent investigation into local events that pique his curiosity—like the inexplicable firebomb attack on an investment adviser who was sitting in his Lexus in a restaurant parking lot. Knopf has a touch I like—cool, careful, reflective—and a great ear for the comic eccentricities of the human voice. Maybe it comes from sitting out on a deck, listening to the gulls squawk.

Sam Acquillo can hide in his wind-swept 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, including a very determined Chief of Police whose top detective has Sam caught in the cross hairs. Part-time carpenter, full-time drinker and co-conspirator with an existential mutt named Eddie Van Halen, Sam tries to lead the simple life. But as always, fate intervenes, this time in the form of Robbie Milhouser, local builder and blundering bully who shares at least one thing with Sam—an irresistible attraction to the beautiful Amanda Anselma. Peal back the glitz and glory 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. Only this time, the life at stake is his own.

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. Suddenly Sam's past reaches out to pull him back into the world of big money and even bigger egos, where the term "corporate intrigue" is redundant and ambition the only virtue. It seems a person important to the private life of a very important person has gone missing in the Hamptons. And it looks like the best way to get her back is to extort Sam's cooperation. After finally achieving some measure of peace and contentment on the tip of Oak Point, overlooking the Little Peconic Bay, Sam is yet again an accidental player in other people's dramas. It takes him into the world of private security goons, predatory financiers and lifestyles of young hedonists, some brave, some beautiful, all a bit lost. But this time there's some added incentive. An opportunity Sam thought he'd never see again. The chance to get a bit of his old life back. The only piece he might actually want. With lawyer Jackie Swaitkowski and cop friend Joe Sullivan reluctantly in tow, and the beautiful Amanda Anselma, fisherman Paul Hodges and mutt Eddie Van Halen eager to lend a hand, Sam is back on the quest.This time with a few ambitions of his own, which lead him into something all his battles in the ring and corporate boardroom could never have prepared him for.

Sailing back from Maine, Sam Acquillo, the hero of four Sam Acquillo Hamptons Mysteries from Permanent Press, 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, NY, a distant and altogether disassociated scrap of Long Island. A summer preserve for the oldest old money in America, and defended by year-round denizens who safeguard their island's insularity with xenophobic fervor, Sam and Amanda are hardly welcomed with open arms. Unless they're the arms of the young and beautiful Anika Fey, daughter of the owner of the Black Swan, the island's only hotel, who's only too eager to fold Sam into her embrace. But feminine wiles aren't the only hazard faced by Sam and his crew. They're soon swept up in big-money intrigue, dark conspiracy, brutality, murder and the machinations of high-tech millionaires, to say nothing of the autumn storms that lash the island with wind and wave. In the years since losing everything, Sam has fought his way back, to an existence that even he believes is worth preserving. And now, bad timing and a broken rudder could result in the greatest loss of all-his life.

The sixth installment in the Sam Acquillo Hamptons Mystery series brings back Knopf's ensemble of famously eccentric and involving characters, not the least being Sam's dog Eddie Van Halen. A hardboiled crime novel, it also examines the fraught intersection of wealth, culture, politics and the ravages of an ugly war. Combine beautiful watery setting with a unique look into the underbelly of the Hamptons, it's an action and suspense story you won't find anywhere else. 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 could they have done? One thing is for certain, Alfie's killers are about to know what it means to murder a friend of Sam, former corporate troubleshooter, former professional boxer and all-around ornery bull dog, and Jackie, a defense lawyer often described as an avenging angel.

s 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, for whom a single, horrific event has helped define his entire existence. Now that event has reached out from the deep past, an unwanted visitor, with secrets within secrets he's forced to unpack like a Russian doll, each more ominous than the one before. What is revealed would be disturbing enough if it wasn't so personal. Not a welcome development for a man who also once said, ""Avoidance, rationalization, and denial are highly underrated coping strategies"". The action moves from Southampton to the Bronx, where Sam once prowled in the part-time care of his father, owner of a truck repair business and a temper that stood out even on the mean streets of the city. It's here that Sam learns that evil history doesn't only repeat itself, it can improve upon the original product. That no matter how things change, the world of cops and criminals, priests, power brokers, wise guys, and even wiser old bartenders stays the same. Or gets much, much worse.

After a Southampton home owner is found dead, Sam Acquillo and defense attorney Jackie Swaitowski discover that the main suspect, a Colombian immigrant, may be innocent, despite the fact that the chief of police has warned them to stay away from the case.

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%, until his best friend Burton Lewis, a certified billionaire, is dragged into a high-profile death investigation. When Sam's girlfriend Amanda notes, "Didn't Fitzgerald say, 'the rich are different from you and me'?" "Yeah, they can afford to be even more screwed up." A former corporate super star, brought down by the machinations of the grasping class, Sam's not entirely unfamiliar with the cultural norms of super wealth. It's why he retreated to his cottage refuge at the tip of Oak Point Peninsula jutting into the Little Peconic Bay. But in the intervening years, he's engaged with all forms of low life tough guys and connivers looking for that edge, an easy path into a social order besotted with unattainable yearning. A world where the best revenge is one with no consequences, no penalties or costs. For some, there is no power without prestige, and no prestige that can't be bought. They see no distinction between corporate profit and high-minded non-profits, charity being the currency of social preeminence. In Deep Dive, Sam discovers just how right he is. The rich can achieve a level of depravity and hate both invisible, and incomprehensible, to the rest of us.

When a brilliant young bioscientist suddenly vanishes, no one seems to know how or why. Her brother has a solution: recruit Sam Acquillo. Another investigation is the last thing Sam wants, but his girlfriend Amanda won’t hear of it. “How will you tell him you won’t try to find his sister?” Sam might be reluctant, but it’s not long before he’s deep in the chase, infiltrating the world of high-stakes biotech, venture capital, deception, betrayal and the venality of millionaires and billionaires. One-time boxer, current cabinetmaker and a talented research engineer in his own right, Sam does what he does best, unlocking conundrums, rescuing the innocent, cornering criminals and busting heads when he has to. Ninth in the Sam Acquillo Hamptons Mystery Series, Blood Bank sees a return of Sam’s supporting cast of oddballs, loyal co-conspirators and a certain canine named Eddie Van Halen, who has an agenda all his own. Set in the late stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, Sam navigates a world gone haywire, where threats to life and the redemption of discovery are delivered in equal measure. Chris Knopf has published 18 mystery/thriller novels. You’re Dead earned starred reviews in Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Library Journal and Booklist, was named a Boston Globe Best Crime Novel and won the Nero Award. Two Time was listed in Marilyn Stasio’s "Recommended Summer Reading" in The New York Times Book Review. Head Wounds was cited as a best mystery of the year by Mysterious Reviews and Deadly Pleasures, receiving the 2008 Benjamin Franklin Award for Best Mystery. His short stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen and Akashic’s Noir series. Kill Switch was short-listed for the Derringer Award.