Sam Acquillo Mysteries Books In Order

Publication Order of Sam Acquillo Hamptons Mystery Books

Chris Knopf is a published novelist, sailor, house designer, cabinet maker and music enthusiastic. He is also the author of the very famous Sam Acquillo Mystery Series a collection of very well written crime novels, including the titles: The Last Refuge, Two Time, Head Wounds (which won the Benjamin Franklin Award for Best Mystery), Hard Stop, and Black Swan. His talent has been recognized with many creative awards along the years and he currently lives with his wife Mary Farrell in Connecticut and Southampton, New York.

The Sam Acquillo Mystery Series is one of the best crime fiction series out there on the last few years and that you will have the pleasure to read. An absorbing and easy to read mystery series that will captive you from the first pages and you won’t be able to put his books down. With a total of six books published and a seventh coming soon this year, the intriguing and intense adventures of Sam Acquillo have caught the attention of thousands of readers around the globe, mystery addicts or not, who find in Chris Knopf writing and narrative style a modern new view to the crime genre, with his ability and gift to create suspense and expectation plus the very well worked dialogues and his sense of humor.

The last Refuge

This is the first book of the Sam Acquillo Mystery Series with a length of about 279 pages, was published on June 30th of 2005 by Permanent Press and counts up to the date with about thirteen editions including paperback, hardcover, e-book, kindle and audio books. The novel was the captivating debut for the Sam Acquillo mystery series bringing a fresher voice to the crime fiction world with a smart, easy to read narrative and voice, with an updated story, and a complex and interesting plot led by a fascinating character as only Sam Acquillo can be and as maybe only Chris Knopf can create.

The plot takes place at the Southhampton in Long Island and starts unfolding in a ramshackle 1940s cottage facing the Little Peconic Bay where our character and hero Sam Acquillo lives. He is a middle -aged ex corporate and professional boxer that has abandoned his past life including his friends and family and a big career to move alone to his now dead inherited parents’ house to do anything but to sit for long hours on his porch, to sip vodka, smoke and talk to his dog while gazing the beautiful bay in front of him. But all his plans of a passive life change abruptly when his elderly horrible neighbor, Regina Broadhurst, appears dead floating in her bathtub and to his surprise nobody really cares and only see the incident as an unlucky accident. She doesn’t have any heirs or money; she doesn’t even own the home she’s occupied for over 50 years. And Sam seems to be the only one who wants to find out what happened. And for the first time after his divorce his brain gets occupied with a different purpose. His senses waking up to all the things that don’t fit around his neighbor’s dead.

Maybe is the engineer inside him wondering why and takes him to a path of uncovering secrets and things nobody could think of. Not even him. Accompany Sam Acquillo on his journey to discover the truth behind his neighbor’s death while he deals with his own personal demons and struggles. Definitively a must read piece.

Two Time

This is the second book of the crime series with a length of about 261 pages, was published on December 30th of 2005 by Permanent Press and counts up to the date with about fifteen editions including paperback, hardcover, ebook, kindle and audio books. The novel is the sequel to the acclaimed debut of the Sam Acquillo mystery series bringing its protagonist the accidental hero of The Refuge for a second time to the dark crime investigation path.
In the very first pages of this second part our again long island native Sam Aquillo almost gets blown up while having a drink of vodka with a female friend in a restaurant in the Hamptons.

His observation and physical skills as a former engineer and professional boxer save him and Jackie, his lawyer friend, from a precipitated end when a car bomb explodes; fate five others in the place and the meant target were not able to avoid. A second blast comes and they are able to escape alive, but he and his friend get injured.

Sam doesn’t like crowds or having too many people around, but he is loyal to the few he calls friends. He has been now back in the Hamptons for some years, healing his wounds, hanging out with his dog and drinking vodka under the skies of the Hamptons and the view of the Little Peconic Bay sitting in the cottage his father built in the 1940s during Sam’s childhood.

A couple of months after the bomb incident, with his friend Jackie still going through medical procedures to repair her face and his hearing slowly recovering, one of his friends, cop Joe Sullivan, asks him to help out in the current investigation. He is informed the attack’s target and dead guy, Jonathan Eldridge, was a wealthy investment analyst and he thinks Sam, with his corporate experience and engineering education, might have a better approach and idea of what questions to ask to move forward the process than the local cops. And one more time Sam Acquillo finds himself in the middle of the action investigating a new major crime.

And Chris Knopf makes it happen one more time, a new crime story with the same easy tone, exquisite dialogues, interesting and solid characters and absorbing plot that will become a pleasure to read and impossible to put down intrigued by all the new discoveries untangling a complex deceit implicating financial transactions, unhappy clients who might be connected with the Mafia.

Don let more time go by to embark this mystery and crime literary adventure and discovering all the secrets the Sam Acquillo Mystery Series has for you.