Two-time protagonist Sam Acquillo, only slightly older since
his first noir appearance a year ago in The Last Refuge, has
lost none of his punch, or bite. Nor has author Chris Knopf lost
any of his wit, inventiveness, and skill in merging social criticism
of Hamptons high life, often hilarious, with a suspenseful murder
mystery.
So engaging is the put-down banter of the
characters, that the staccato dialogue almost eclipses the
solid story line. Who's behind the car bomb that destroys a
Lexus, the man inside and four innocent people at a local restaurant?
Sam is wounded by the blast and, more seriously, so is his
lady-friend Jackie Swaitkowski, a Sag Harbor lawyer, laid over
from The Last Refuge, who knows Sam well enough to tell him
to stick to his strengths: "Make
the coffee, drive your lunatic car, offend people we meet along
the way." Does he ever!
Other visitors from the earlier book also
make welcome reappearances, especially a down-to-earth wealthy
WASP corporate attorney who provides Knopf with entrée
to upscale venues and an opportunity to show that not all the
rich and famous are frivolous. It's not necessary, by the way,
to have read The Last Refuge because Knopf handles exposition
with deft and minimal reference.
Two Time moves out fast with a fresh set of villains and minor
characters, including a riotously funny Jamaican doctor, and
a sad, mentally ill woman in a nursing home. It also has an innovative
psychological twist with cleverly disguised clues throughout.
Sam remains as he was in The Last Refuge, a master of sardonic
observations that respect the difference between sentiment and
sentimentality and that play to a reader's intelligence by way
of literary references.
Knopf also provides Sam with a carpentry
motif that reinforces his hero's grounding in the real world
and his distance from the madding crowd. An MIT engineering
grad who was head of a tech and support division at a big corporation
before he quit in a principled rage, Sam is also an amateur
boxer and professional smart-ass. He lives in a decidedly un-Hampton
part of the Hamptons —the "broth" area
. . . the soup's over on the ocean side" — in a cottage
his father built, staying on the porch most of the time so he
can keep an eye on Little Peconic Bay. "After five years,
it was still there, so the vigilance must be paying off."
Sam's in no hurry. It takes him three months to get drawn into
investigating the murder. At 53, he has only three acknowledged
interests: Absolut Vodka, which he consumes in unbelievable quantities,
his dog Eddie and his '67 Grand Prix.
Through "avoidance and denial," he
thinks he has placed his passion for the beautiful Amanda Anselma,
also an import from the earlier novel, behind him, but she's
moved in next door, and no way will they be able to ignore
the chemistry and camaraderie between them. If Two Time is
as sexy as The Last Refuge, it's because Knopf continues to
understand the appeal of suggestiveness and understated sensuality.
Two Time is being classified as a murder mystery, which it is,
but it is primarily a literate work of fiction, with well-rounded
characters and an impressive diversity of subject matter, including
high finance, merry-prankster performance art, house construction
and boxing. If Knopf is influenced by Dashiel Hammett and Elmore
Leonard, he also shows affinity for lyrical prose.
Here's Sam, usually sarcastic or sneeringly silent, musing to
himself on a July day "when the air out on the East End
hung, like hot, wet gauze, and the sun was busy charring the
epidermals of investment bankers, administrative assistants and
trophy wives, and irrigation systems drew down the aquifer to
convert three-acre flower gardens into simulated rain forests
and maintain the water level of organically shaped gunite pools,
surrounded by tumbled marble pavers and teak recliners with built-in
cupholders drenched in the condensate of crystal, decanted, lime-choked
gin and tonics."
Sure, an exciting narrative is worth harvesting, but writing
like this also separates the wheat from the chaff.
