THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
Sunday,
May 22, 2005
CRIME / Marilyn StasioThe spare, emotionally
eloquent style of Chris Knopf’s first novel, THE
LAST REFUGE (Permanent Press,
$26) gives shapely form to the confessional story narrated
by Sam
Acquillo, a 52-year old systems engineer who has opted out
of his fast-track life and gone to seed at his parents’ summer
cottage—more
of a shack, actually—on Little Peconic Bay in the Long
Island resort town of Southampton. “It bothered me that
people considered light-heartedness and optimism the norm,” says
this reclusive hero, who has spent the past four years drinking
alone, tinkering
with his father’s ’67 Pontiac Grand Prix and brooding
on “the desperate hopelessness of human existence.” Sam
is drawn out of his self-pitying gloom when the crabby old lady
in the next cottage drowns in her bathtub, and he lets a local
cop talk him into serving as the administrator of her estate.
Not that he’s looking for trouble, but the death looks
fishy to Sam, who has a suspicious mind and knows a thing or
two about
waterfront property values. While his low-key investigation is
only minimally suspenseful, the characters he chats up are such
original oddballs and their conversation so bracing that you
want to kick off your shoes and spend some time on the porch
with them,
just taking in the view and enjoying the talk.
