Among the plethora of murder/mystery
books which will soon flood the shelves of bookstores, Chris
Knopf's, The Last
Refuge, might
be the most intelligent choice, as it blends beautifully
crafted suspenseful writing with salient insights into
Hamptons' life.
Unlike many of the summer Hamptons murder/mystery books,
The Last Refuge doesn't seem like it was written with a
market in mind;
it's a nail-biting story with a Byronic anti-hero (sans
the usual clichés) that just happens to take place in
the Hamptons, and hence is not reliant on readers' knowledge
of summer protocol,
(nor does it reiterate what everybody already knows). Protagonist,
Sam Acquillo is a broken man in his early 50s. Once a high
profile engineer living in a wealthy suburb of Connecticut,
Acquillo has
lost his daughter, his wife, his job, and his motivation.
However, when
he finds his caustic neighbor (Regina Broadhurst) floating
and bloated in her bathtub, he takes an interest in the
circumstances of her death and, accompanied by his dog,
Acquillo's search
for
the truth accompanies his personal transition from emotional
indifference. The story starts off rather slowly, and Knopf
pens his main character
as a man who has conceded defeat:
I said I slept on the
porch, but mostly I'd sit at the table and smoke Camels,
drink over-priced vodka and look
at the
bay. I had
a bargain going with Nature. She was supposed to let
me do this long enough to get my fill, before shutting down
all
my internal
organs, and I was supposedto worship her greater work,
like the salt water taffy hydrangea at the edge of the
lawn.
While Knopf's story is set in present day Hamptons,
his writing exudes a rich, almost decadent film-noir quality,
and Sam
Acquillo is not unlike William Holden's character in
Billy Wilder's
Sunset Boulevard.
Joe Sullivan was almost a generic
cop. Big in the gut and across the shoulders, liked to wear
sunglasses, carried a Smith on
his hip and a chip on his shoulder. There were a
half dozen
[police]
cars over at Regina's, most of them with bubble gum
machines blinking on top.
Acquillo volunteers to be
the administrator of Regina Broadhurst's estate, and so embarks
on an unofficial
investigation into
her death-which may be plausibly inspired by the
sheer boredom of
just sitting around drinking vodka. Acquillo spends
most of his day
fixing up an old car and thinking about his father,
an alcoholic who was beaten to death in a bar.
The plot
escalates dramatically
when Acquillo discovers that his dead neighbor
doesn't own the ramshackle (but waterfront) home she inhabited,
and she
doesn't
appear to have paid any rent. His search for answers
is aided by a lustful aging blond who works at
the
bank and
develops
a 'keen'
interest in Acquillo-unbeknownst to her husband
who runs the branch and is something of a malcontent.The
dead
neighbor, like Catherine
Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights, spends most of the
book dead, which is unfortunate, as it would have
been interesting
to
explore her
relationship to Acquillo-seeing as they were neighbors,
after all. The Last Refuge, however, is a swift
read, simply because
the writing
flows beautifully and packs in compelling local
imagery:
The sharper angle of the autumn sun was rinsing
away the remainder of summer's color. Still,
it was clear
and the
air did little
to interfere with the light that shot down Main
St., careening off
the worn Mercedes and Rolls Royces of the year-round
rich, and the service vans and dented pickups
that reclaimed the village
off-season. I bought some flavored coffee and
a croissant...avoiding eye contact with the tradesman
more embarrassed than
me
to be seen in a Summer People hangout.
Knopf paints
a clear schism between the locals and the summer residents,
which is not only an
intelligent
allusion
to a
growing aristocracy
in America, but brilliantly mirrors his narrator's
own corporate meltdown, which is disclosed
in chunks throughout
the book.
Knopf's other characters are crafted as secondary
figures in the story,
so we only really get to know Acquillo, and
near the end of the book, as he brawls with the man
from the
black 7-Series
BMW,
you may find yourself cheering for Acquillo
and cursing the stock villain.
The murder plot unravels logically with the
discovery of new
information, but without such masterful writing
and characterizations, it wouldn't
be anything special-as far as murder/mystery
plots go. But then what would The
Maltese Falcon have
been without
Sam
Spade?
The denouement involves several revelations
regarding the mysterious
Bay Side
Holdings company and of course the truth
about who really owns the dead neighbor's house (and
obsolete
factory
behind it that's
masked by shrubs). Although this book fits
snugly into the genre
of Hamptons/murder/mystery, it's far more
than that, as Knopf paints characters with a Dickensian
alacrity
and
moves them
effortlessly around in a Hamptons where money,
greed and lust reign.
