Connecticut Muse
Hard Stop
by Chris Knopf
Reviewed by R.L. Crossland
Befitting a modern hard-boiled sleuth, Chris Knopf’s Sam
Acquillo is a man who’s fallen from a great height…and
that long drop provides readers with a brief, but spectacular
view of Manhattan’s more pricey suburbs.
Acquillo rose to the heights of vice-president of research and
development for an international energy conglomerate in Connecticut,
and then it was all gone. The job loss was followed by a personal
meltdown, a symbolic pitfall perhaps for engineers immersed in
high energy applications.
Not that Acquillo was ever the model corporate
employee, or even the stereotypical R & D nerd. Sam has always been haunted
by a ruggedly semidestructive side. Now in his 50s, he’s
drinking to energize his philosophical inclinations, boxing as
an avocation and returned to the Hamptons as a finishing carpenter
as his ostensible vocation.
His reoriented life gives him the perfect
vantage point to regard, and plumb, the glitzy lifestyles of
New York’s financial
wunderkind and their campfollowers. In view of his habit of critical
observation, Sam is wisely on a first name basis with at least
one police detective, on a free advice basis with a criminal
defense lawyer and a social basis with the manager of a local
waterfront bar, all of whom must be careful not to delve too
deeply into his projects.
Fortunately Sam exudes quirky charm which appears to encourages
tolerance in others. Acquillo is best at matters that require
the versatility of an unofficial investigator who can navigate
in the white collar and blue collar worlds. Now as an outsider
who lived inside the corporate machine, he finds himself plying
his true vocation, unearthing inconvenient truths.
Sometimes that requires him to rewire a sophisticated security
system, to con a high priced law firm, or simply to deliver a
judicious uppercut.
In Hard Stop, Sam finds himself
maneuvered into taking an assignment from a man he once despised,
and he now pities. He needs to locate a drop-dead gorgeous
management consultant of black and Asian origin. “Drop-dead” and “meltdown” seem
to be recurring themes for Sam.
The management consultant turns out to be a beautiful and intelligent
woman caught in the throes of corporate intrigue and a problematic
romance.
Knopf is good at injecting the plot with
memorable, if not always likeable, Long Island characters such
as “Honest Boy Ackerman, “ a
corporate security operative of uncertain loyalties, and “Zelda
Fitzgerald,” (no relation to the other Zelda Fitzgerald),
who breakfasts on sashimi and wheat toast which she will not
share since only she only “buys for one.” Nor does
Knopf spare the surrounding suburbs his eye for class and conflict, “To
get to Stamford from Bridgeport you had to go down the coast
and up a few socioeconomic strata.”
Hard Stop manages to blend action
and intrigue; corporate cultures and suburban inconsistencies;
character quirks and dour social observations; to the degree
that you might really want to visit “the Hamptons”-
so long as you were guaranteed a return ticket.
R. L. Crossland is author of Red Ice and the recent Admiral
David Glasgow Farragut Book Award winning mystery, Jade Rooster,
set in 1913 Asiatic Fleet.
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