Meet Sam Acquillo: dropped out, burnt out, reclusive,
52-year-old resident of the East End. The first sentence of this
stylish,
satisfying mystery tells us exactly where.
“My father built this cottage at the
tip of Oak Point on the Little Peconic Bay in the Town of Southampton,
Long Island, in the mid-1940s
when there was nobody else around to build anything.”
Oak
Point is ‘the last refuge’ of the title. (To save
you the bother: TheYellow Book map has a dozen Oaks of one
sort and another but no Oak Point.) Sam’s neighbor on
the beach side of Noyac Road is an ornery, flinty old harpy
(Sam's words)
living on $12,000 per annum, for whom he performs handyman
chores when summoned. Sam it is, unsummoned, who finds her
dead in her
bathtub. His curiosity awakens because he knows the arthritic
old lady never took a bath. She took showers.
Nobody else wanting
the job, he becomes the court-appointed administrator of her
estate. “I’m trying to clean things up,” he
explains. Curiosity killed the cat, or in Sam’s case,
comes mighty close.
Sam had been a highly paid engineer, head
of technical services at a mighty corporation. He had invented
a doodad (details provided)
to improve the fuel efficiency of automobiles. He understands
bath plugs and the innards of irons, everyday utensils pertinent
to more
than one murder.
He quit his corporation when it decided to
sell off his profitable division. At the same time he quit
his socialite wife. His daughter quit him.
So here he is alone with Eddie, a mutt never happier than
when chasing tennis balls batted by his master across the scruffy
grass and onto the beach, or sitting in the car with his
head out of
the window. Sam inherited cottage and car from his parents,
the car
his dad's “big, stupid” 1967 Pontiac Grand Prix.
Sam
is world-weary, cynical. The divorce settlement swallowed up
his bank account, not that he cares about money. He smokes,
drinks
copious vodka (not before lunchtime), and more copious coffee
(even cinnamon hazelnut), readsde Tocqueville, enjoys Vivaldi
and jazz,
has never owned a TV, and is attractive to women.
Sounds familiar?
Here is a 21st-century offspring of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe.
Remember? ”Down these mean streets a man
must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished
nor afraid” Not
that the streets of Sag Harbor and environs are mean. But
of the slew of crime fiction set in the Hamptons, here is that
rarity,
a story focused not on the rich and the chi-chi but on regular
people, and on nature: the air, light, and briny, woodsy
smells of the East End. Every few pages we have a reminder
of the
ocean.
“ The wind was knocking
the tops off the waves before they broke on shore, sending
up a foamy spray that the sun lit into slivers
of pale gray glass.”
” The water was rippled
and slick, silver-blue like a sharkskin suit”
” Some lights were
still lit over on Nassau Point and Hog's Neck, full of guys
on porches, staring back into the mysteries of
Little Peconic Bay.”
Greed drives the story. Do the
following terms give you a frisson?
Real estate, development, property values, subdivisions,
wetlands, zonings,hearings, housing permits, appeals board,
nonconformance,
leases, exclusives, variances, bulldozers, backhoes. As dryly,
factually used every week in our Hamptons newspapers, perhaps
not, but they
are at the heart ofthis classy, wholly credible page-turner.
Sam,
with plenty of time, forges ahead, asking questions, knocking
on doors, being shown the door, backing away from
sexy, lonely
ladies, and closing in on the truth. He is beaten to a pulp
and wakes up
in Southampton Hospital. His odyssey takes him hither and
yon: to, for example, Shelter Island, to a fictional nightclub
on
the Bridgehampton-Sag
Harbor Turnpike, and to factual Dune Road, Southampton. He
muses on the admission price for aplace on Dune Road, starting
at
around $20 million.
“When my father started digging the foundation
hole for his cottage, nobody but reclusive eccentrics wanted
to live out in the
dunes. It was a wilderness where locals like us camped and had family
barbecues and risked our lives body surfing in storm swept
seas. Now it was the realization of billionaires’ dreams”
At the other
end of the spectrum, the trade parade. “An endless
caravan oftradesmen's vans and pickups and customized Japanese
economy cars filled with Hispanic day workers in sweatshirts
and baseball caps. And S.U.V.s and newer cars bringing in the professionals
and sales clerks who lived up island where you could still
afford to buy a house.”
This is the debut novel of Chris Knopf. The blurb
tells us that he is a house designer, cabinetmaker, musician, award-winning
copywriter, and head of a marketing communications agency.
He lives with his
wife and two terriers in Connecticut and Southampton
Village.
Sam
achieves a measure of redemption and wins, as he must in the
morality tale that is crime fiction. Along
the way
we have
wit,
sparky dialogue, suspense, and mobs of flesh-and-blood
characters from low-lifes to a gay, patrician, Croesus-rich
lawyer,
a true gentleman, to revive lingering hopes that money
may not
necessarily
be the root of all evil.
Ah yes, and an appealing woman.
Word has it that a sequel is under way.Should the lady reappear
let’s hope she will not curb
Sam’s vodka, caffeine, and nicotine intake
too much. He is excellent value as he is.
Highly recommended.
Michael Kenyon was a longtime contributor
to The Star who lived in Southampton. He died on May 29.
