About this item
As Sam Acquillo tells us in the early pages of Back Lash, "Not everyone gets to live their adult lives orbiting a central mystery. But that's how it s been for Sam, for whom a single, horrific event has helped define his entire existence. Now that event has reached out from the deep past, an unwanted visitor, with secrets within secrets he's forced to unpack like a Russian doll, each more ominous than the one before. What is revealed would be disturbing enough if it wasn't so personal. Not a welcome development for a man who also once said, "Avoidance, rationalization, and denial are highly underrated coping strategies".The action moves from Southampton to the Bronx, where Sam once prowled in the part-time care of his father, owner of a truck repair business and a temper that stood out even on the mean streets of the city. It's here that Sam learns that evil history doesn't only repeat itself, it can improve upon the original product. That no matter how things change, the world of cops and criminals, priests, power brokers, wise guys, and even wiser old bartenders stays the same.Or gets much, much worse.
About the Author
Chris Knopf is the author of Dead Anyway (winner of the 2013 Nero Award) , Cries of the Lost and the Sam Acquillo mystery series, including The Last Refuge, Two Time, Head Wounds (which won the Benjamin Franklin Award for Best Mystery) , Hard Stop, and Black Swan.Chris has been writing himself out of trouble since he talked a teacher into accepting a short story in lieu of an essay, and an essay in lieu of a multiple choice exam. A college professor wrote a comment on a friend's paper that would have also applied to him: "You write well, which is good because you have very little command of the subject matter."To support his fiction habit he started working in marketing communications. That evolved into a career as an advertising copywriter and later a creative director at Mintz & Hoke Advertising and PR, which he and his wife Mary Farrell took over in 2000.His preferred environment involves a lot of saltwater, having summered as a youth on the Jersey Shore. He lives with his wife Mary Farrell in Connecticut and Southampton, NY, where he sets sail on the Little Peconic Bay.
