In the opening chapter of Chris Knopf’s second novel,
Two Time, the reluctant hero, Sam Acquillo sits patiently at
a waterside restaurant in East Hampton, sipping his vodka on
the rocks, waiting for his friend Jackie to show up. The people
and surroundings are depicted with needle sharp precision - the
white light clarity of detail that is etched in the memory just
prior to a catastrophic event. Sam sees it unfold without fully
registering the implications, until it’s almost too late.
It is a stunning, disturbing opening
Two Time is a follow up to Knopf’s well received first
book The Last Refuge, published in 2005 by The Permanent Press,
about which Marilyn Stasio (New York Times) said: “the
characters are such original oddballs and their conversation
so bracing, you want to kick off your shoes and spend some time
on the porch with them.” Most of the same cast of characters
crowd into Two Time, with the addition of a gangster, his two
meathead thugs, a wan, agoraphobic widow and an artist and his
entourage who could give the word eccentric a whole other meaning,
even in the Hamptons.
Lovers of the mystery genre have certain
basic requirements: an authentic setting; a credible, intriguing
protagonist; sharp dialogue and a rattling good plot to keep
the pages turning. Knopf supplies all four in abundance. The
idiosyncratic hero is Sam Acquillo, a man whose ambition it
is to sit quietly in his Adirondack chair, his dog Eddie at
his feet, watching the sun set over Little Peconic Bay, and
focus serious attention on his vodka consumption. This laudable
plan has a way of being interrupted by various murders or attempted
murders. If it weren’t
for his friendship with a few fellow locals, the town cop Joe
Sullivan, the philosopher/bartender at the Pequot, Paul Hodges,
and his old pal and lawyer Jackie Swaitkowski (my favorite from
The Last Refuge) he might have been able to stay out of trouble
but they, plus his insatiable curiosity, propel him to become
mired deeper and deeper in the murder investigation.
One of the great pleasures of both books
is the clever, staccato dialogue. Knopf has a pitch perfect
ear and you find yourself smiling as you read the quick come-back
lines. Another is that whatever Sam tackles, whether it’s an addition to the Little
Peconic Bay cottage where he was raised, untangling the intricacies
of complex financial transactions or tinkering with his 1967
Pontiak Grand Prix with a modified 400 cubic inch V8 (whatever
that is) you have confidence that Knopf knows precisely what
he is talking about. Sam is super observant: for instance he
notices, on a visit to Riverhead, the miles of sod fields growing
beside the highway, to be cut like huge tiles and laid square
by square for an instant, perfectly even, green grass carpeting
in front of wealthy new mega mansions. His description of a sail
in Hodges boat is evocative but unsentimental: “the light
delivered by the Canadian air was hard and brittle, but would
deepen as the sun burned up and swept away the morning haze.
The tall grasses that filled the marshland that bordered the
pond swayed in the wind and the cormorants were lining up along
the booms of the boats moored in the pond to dry out their wings
and crap white graffiti all over the blue and tan sail covers.” He
convinces you that he knows how to unfurl a jib, winch the halyard
to raise the sail and make his way from Little Peconic Bay, avoiding
the messy race around the tip of Jessup’s Neck, to bring
the boat safely into dock in Sag Harbor. Anyone who lives or
summers regularly in the Hamptons will recognize that his feel
for the locale, from the beauty of the light filtered through
the abundant foliage, to descriptions of an upscale art auction
and also of rather rattier venues, is dead-on.
And then there’s Amanda, a cool, beautiful woman who Sam
is crazy about but can’t quite trust. She hasn’t
always been exactly above board. Is she two-timing him? Or does
the title refer to some other situation. As the plot unfolds,
it is up to Sam to fit the seemingly irrational pieces together.
But he’s an old hand at solving problems and you can have
confidence that however convoluted, he’ll unravel this
one.
