"Elysiana is a departure for Knopf, whose Sam Acquillo mysteries have won
reviewers’ raves, but he nails it. The seemingly shambling plot proves
ultimately to be sly, and Knopf’s sweet-spirited style recalls memories spurred
by faded home movies of long-ago vacations. His bio says that he was a New
Jersey lifeguard back in the day, and he captures the zeitgeist of the Shore
perfectly. Every “shoobie” on the beach who eschews MTV’s odious Jersey Shore
should be reading Elysiana this season."
— Booklist
"Smart dialogue and sharp social observations distinguish this stand-alone
thriller from Knopf (Short Squeeze and four other Hamptons mysteries). In the
summer of 1969, life on the sunny New Jersey resort island of Elysiana simmers
as town cops feud with the beach patrol, fed-up wives elude their slimy
husbands, local politicians double-cross each other, lots of dope flows
everywhere, and various needy, wounded people—such as a brain-damaged lifeguard,
a young woman from Chicago who fled her lecherous dad, and a smalltime criminal
who's also a maniac surfer—look for reasons to go on. Knopf sets up a lot of
competing characters capable of semi-clever scheming to get what they want, then
shows a massive hurricane ripping their plans and their island apart. Like John
D. Macdonald or Charles Willeford in a lighter mood, he's unsentimentally fond
of his characters and tentatively hopeful about their ability to salvage
something from the wreckage around them."
—Publishers Weekly
"It’s not every blood-and-guts action romp filled with hippie dropouts and
degenerate misfits, many of them high on hallucinogens and low in heeding the
law, that can reference The Bernouilli effect, Jean Paul Sartre and Anais Nin.
But Chris Knopf delivers, with ease, wit and humor, never letting arcana
interfere with suspense. The result is Elysiana, named for a fictional South
Jersey barrier island. It’s Knopf’s sixth novel and a breakaway from his
award-winning Sam Acquillo murder mysteries, featuring the hard-headed,
tough-talking, soft-hearted Southampton-based protagonist, though traces of
Sam’s character can be detected in one or two of the odd balls who make their
home on this stretch of land, at once savagely beautiful off shore and often
savage inland."
—Joan Baum for NPR and The Independent
You can also find out more about Chris Knopf and his work at
sameddie.com
CHRIS KNOPF is the award winning
author of the highly acclaimed Sam
Acquillo Hamptons mystery series:
The
Last Refuge, Two Time, Head Wounds,
and
Hard Stop. As a young college student he worked as a lifeguard in Avalon
on the South Jersey shore—a place not
unlike the setting for
Elysiana. A sailor,
cabinet maker, and advertising executive
at Mintz & Hoke in Avon, Connecticut,
Chris and his wife Mary also spend considerable time at their Southampton, Long
Island home.
