Fredericksburg, Virginia      June 22, 2008 

NOIR AT ITS FINEST

CHRIS KNOPF'S "Head Wounds" is the third mystery featuring Sam Acquillo, the former boxer, corporate executive and husband who seems to be trying to drink all the vodka on Long Island's East End.

When he's not simultaneously solving murders and beating the rap himself, he works as a carpenter. He has the proper noir credentials: He's been ill-used by life and is as crusty as any Bogart hard guy, but underneath he has the requisite code of honor and wisecracking patter to make you respect and even like him. He'd do some serious butt-kicking, but he has a head injury, compliments of his days as a pugilist. Sam has to pull his punches, literally and figuratively.

There are so many mysteries out there, so much noir, that it must be difficult to come up with something new and different, but Knopf seems to have done it.
He places his willfully working-class antihero in and around the Hamptons, so that he can deal with crime and squalor among the rich and famous. Sam finds beauty in a tattooed and pierced saloon-keeper's daughter and ugliness among the smooth, well-dressed upper crust. His dog, of course, is a mutt, just like him.

For anyone who has spent any time in places like North Sea and Sag Harbor, the settings are dead-on (as they should be, since he lives in Southampton part of the year).

Knopf's first two Acquillo books, "The Last Refuge" and "Two Time," were praised by The New York Times and many other reputable sources. He doesn't seem to have lost any of his steam with this one. The story keeps you hanging on, and the writing is beautiful and funny.

His neglected lawn "expressed an exuberance that seemed uncivil to restrain with anything as pitiless as a lawn mower." The mansions springing up where a small farm used to be "were all paid for with cash, just a slice off last year's bonus. A field filled with the ripening blooms of Wall Street, seeded by a relentless wind out of the west."

Knopf is adept at controlling the pace, moving the plot along and balancing a large cast of characters adroitly. And, perhaps most important, you don't know who did it until he's ready for you to know.

"Head Wounds" makes us wish with anticipation for the fourth Sam Acquillo mystery.

Wish granted: The fourth one [Hard Stop] is due in May of 2009.

—reviewed by Howard Owen, Free Lance-Star business editor and a novelist.