Permanent Press (256 pp) $26, May 2005,
ISBN 1-57962-118-X
A simmering midlife dropout’s attempt
to live below the radar in the Hamptons is torpedoed when the
old lady next door dies.
There’s no reason to assume that
Regina Broadbent, floating in her bathtub, died anything but
a natural death—unless you happen to know that almost
any plug would have let the water empty several days ago and that Regina’s
arthritis confined her to showers. Sam Acquillo knows the first of these
because he used to work as an industrial designer and the second because
Regina’s
practically the only person he’s been connected to since his wife and
daughter left him after he punched out the board chairman. The latter was
plotting to
sell his cash-cow corporate division out from under him. Because Sam has
little to do but tinker around his house and sip vodka, it’s no trouble
for him to accost Regina’s surly nephew and suggest that he appoint
Sam administrator of her estate, and then to poke around enough to find that
Regina didn’t
own her house but didn’t pay rent either. In fact, Regina’s life,
which seemed even quieter than Sam’s, barely kept the lid on an elaborate
scheme Sam and his more-than-personal banker Amanda Battiston will expose
if only they aren’t stopped by some menacing types you wouldn’t
expect in such a high-rent district.
In this first of a series, Knopf turns
a mean sentence, and his debut manages to make Sam’s charged flashbacks
more interesting than the main event.
