About this item
A routine visit to one of Sam Acquillo's job sites becomes anything but. The home's owner, Victor Bollings, is lying in a pool of blood, the back of his head bashed in. One of Sam's closest friends in the cabinetry trade is quickly behind bars as the obvious suspect. For the cops, this is all standard operating procedure. But as it turns out, nothing about the case is routine, obvious or standard in any way.Sam and defense attorney Jackie Swaitkowski are used to an uneasy, though often reciprocal, relationship with law enforcement. But when the chief of police tells Sam to stay the hell away, this time he really means it. For Sam and Jackie, words like this are highly motivational, until strange new forces emerge from the shadows. Forces from well beyond the borders of Southampton, from worlds as sinister as they are unfathomable.That doesn't mean Sam and Jackie still don t have a job to do. And a responsibility to defend the utterly defenseless: a Colombian immigrant with no legal status, no political power and no alibi, with the full weight of the judicial system local, state, national and international arrayed against him.The eighth edition of the Sam Acquillo Mystery Series disrupts the illusion that the Hamptons are safely immune from the struggles that enflame much of the world. It s an examination of how fear of the unknown ignites prejudice and hate, overturning norms of decency and principle.For Sam and Jackie, it's also a lesson in the interconnectedness of evil.
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.
