Two Time

Starred review from April 17, 2006
At the start of Knopf's super second mystery starring ex-boxer and retired engineer Sam Acquillo (after 2005's The Last Refuge
), Sam is enjoying a drink with a lady friend at an East Hampton restaurant when a nearby car and its driver are firebombed out of existence. In the aftermath, Sam, assisted by his old buddy, retired cop Joe Sullivan, looks into who might have had it in for the victim, wealthy consultant Jonathan Eldridge. After talking to Eldridge's agoraphobic widow and suspicious-acting lawyer, Sam continues to investigate—and the more he pokes around the more data he turns up suggesting a complex deception involving financial transfers, angry clients who may or may not be Mafia-connected, the murdered man's estranged artist brother and out-of-it mother. A sly depiction of the east end of Long Island and the Hamptons as they really are, combined with strong plotting, solid characters and hard-boiled dialogue worthy of Elmore Leonard or John D. MacDonald will make this a beach read that you won't be able to put down even under threat of sunburn.