It's bad enough when someone you know is brutally murdered, it's worse when the guy was a paranoid schizophrenic helplessly bound to a wheelchair. Sam Acquillo and Jackie Swaitkowski tried to look after Alfie Aldergreen, as had others around the Village of Southampton, but now they were forced to wonder, what else could they have done?

One thing is for certain, Alfie's killers are about to know what it means to murder a friend of Sam, former corporate troubleshooter, former professional boxer and all-around ornery bull dog, and Jackie, a defense lawyer often described as an avenging angel.

This sixth installment in the Sam Acquillo Hamptons Mystery series brings back Knopf's ensemble of famously eccentric and involving characters, not the least of which is Sam's mutt Eddie Van Halen. Not just a crime story, it examines the fraught intersection of wealth, culture, politics and the ravages of an ugly war. Combine beautiful watery settings with a unique look into the underbelly of the Hamptons, it's a mystery you won't find anywhere else. 

CHRIS KNOPF'S twelve previous mysteries have critics likening Sam Acquillo to Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade, Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe and Robert Parker's Spenser, while repeatedly comparing Knopf to Elmore Leonard.

The Last Refuge was a finalist for The Connecticut Book Award. Two Time (2007) was named a runner-up for this same prize. It was also one of thirteen mysteries listed in Marilyn Stasio's "Recommended Summer Reading" column in The New York Times Book Review, was listed in Entertainment Weekly as one of the 50 "Hot Picks" of that summer, and Publishers Weekly chose it as one of the "Best 100 Books for 2006."

Head Wounds (2008) won the 2008 Benjamin Franklin Award for Best Myster. Last year he won the 2013 Nero Award for Dead Anyway, the first in a new series featuring Arthur Cathcart, followed by Cries of the Lost (2013) and A Billion Ways to Die (2014). His mysteries have had overseas subrights sales in the UK, Canada, Japan, Spain, Germany, Turkey, Italy, England, and China.