The Montreal
Gazette, Saturday, November 4, 2006
Hot Reads
CLEVER WHODUNIT STARTS WITH A BANG
Want some crisp dialogue, a clever story and some very colourful
characters? Author Chris Knopf serves up all of the above with
a smart, sometimes funny, and twisted story in Two Time, his
second novel.
Sam Acquillo, a former Manhattan engineering
executive, now retired and living in Southampton, Long Island,
is minding his own business, having a drink on an outdoor terrace,
waiting for his lawyer pal Jackie to show up. Mere metres from
where he’s
sitting, financial adviser Jonathan Eldridge gets into his fancy
car in a parking lot to answer a cell call and is blown to smithereens.
Five innocents are killed in the blast, and Sam and Jackie are
the sole survivors. And this is in the first 10 pages.
When Sullivan, a solid but decidedly small-town
cop friend, asks the worldly and sophisticated Sam to speak
to Eldridge’s
widow – well he’s sucked into the investigation.
The widow is a wealthy agoraphobic, the deceased has a wacky
performance artist brother, there’s a local gangster, some
tough thug bodyguards and a venal lawyer.
Motive and means paint more than one person
as possibly guilty for Eldridge’s death. Add a mysterious love interest to
the story – the lovely Amanda, who moves in next door to
Sam – and the book has everything you need to keep reading
and put off doing the laundry for the whole weekend.
Knopf has a way with words, you can hear
the characters’ conversations
in your head, and you’ll be guessing whodunit until the
last pages.
Two Time
By Chris Knopf
Random House, Canada,
361 pages, $29.95
Anne Sutherland
|
