Sam Acquillo Hamptons Mystery
4 primary works • 9 total works
Book 1
Sam Acquillo is a middle-aged corporate dropout living in his dead parents' ramshackle cottage. He has abandoned friends, family and a big-time career to sit on his porch, drink vodka and stare at the Little Peconic Bay. But when the old lady next door is found dead in her bathtub, Sam is the only one who wonders why. Despite himself, the ex-engineer and ex-professional boxer finds himself uncovering secrets no one could have imagined. Meanwhile, a procession of quirky characters including a beautiful banker, pot-smoking lawyer and gay billionaire join a full complement of police, thugs and local luminaries intruding on Sam's misanthropic ways. And some are deadly...
Book 3
Sam Acquillo can hide in his windswept waterfront cottage all he wants, but the demons of his past are going to find him. Worse, they've teamed up with some pretty nasty demons of the present, including a very determined Chief of Police whose top detective has Sam caught in the crosshairs.
Part-time carpenter, full-time drinker and co-conspirator with an existential mutt named Eddie Van Halen, Sam tries to lead the simple life. But as always, fate intervenes, this time in the form of Robbie Milhouser, local builder and blundering bully who shares at least one thing with Sam — an irresistible attraction to the beautiful Amanda Anselma.
Peel back the glitz and glory of the fabled Hamptons and you'll find a beautiful place filled with ugly secrets. This is Sam Acquillo's world. Moving effortlessly across the social divide with wry pal Jackie Swaitkowski and rich guy Burton Lewis, the ex-boxer, ex-corporate infighter seems doomed to straddle the thin red line between envy and love, hate and forgiveness, goodness and greed.
And sometimes life and death. Only this time, the life at stake is his own.
Part-time carpenter, full-time drinker and co-conspirator with an existential mutt named Eddie Van Halen, Sam tries to lead the simple life. But as always, fate intervenes, this time in the form of Robbie Milhouser, local builder and blundering bully who shares at least one thing with Sam — an irresistible attraction to the beautiful Amanda Anselma.
Peel back the glitz and glory of the fabled Hamptons and you'll find a beautiful place filled with ugly secrets. This is Sam Acquillo's world. Moving effortlessly across the social divide with wry pal Jackie Swaitkowski and rich guy Burton Lewis, the ex-boxer, ex-corporate infighter seems doomed to straddle the thin red line between envy and love, hate and forgiveness, goodness and greed.
And sometimes life and death. Only this time, the life at stake is his own.
Book 7
"As Sam Acquillo tells us in the early pages of Back Lash, 'Not everyone gets to live their adult lives orbiting a central mystery.' But that's how it s been for Sam, for whom a single, horrific event has helped define his entire existence. Now that event has reached out from the deep past, an unwanted visitor, with secrets within secrets he's forced to unpack like a Russian doll, each more ominous than the one before. What is revealed would be disturbing enough if it wasn't so personal. Not a welcome development for a man who also once said, 'Avoidance, rationalization, and denial are highly underrated coping strategies'. The action moves from Southampton to the Bronx, where Sam once prowled in the part-time care of his father, owner of a truck repair business and a temper that stood out even on the mean streets of the city. It's here that Sam learns that evil history doesn't only repeat itself, it can improve upon the original product. That no matter how things change, the world of cops and criminals, priests, power brokers, wise guys, and even wiser old bartenders stays the same. Or gets much, much worse." -- Amazon.com.
Book 9
When a colleague in the building trades is arrested for murder, it will take both Sam Acquillo and defense attorney Jackie Swaitkowski to defend the defenseless.
After finally achieving some measure of peace and contentment on the tip of Oak Point, overlooking the Little Peconic Bay, Sam is yet again an accidental player in other people's dramas. It takes him into the world of private security goons, predatory financiers and lifestyles of young hedonists, some brave, some beautiful, all a bit lost. But this time there's some added incentive. An opportunity Sam thought he'd never see again, the chance to get a bit of his old life back. The only piece of it that he might actually want. With lawyer Jackie Swaitkowski and cop friend Joe Sullivan reluctantly in tow, and the beautiful Amanda Anselma, fisherman Paul Hodges and mutt Eddie Van Halen eager to lend a hand, Sam is back on the quest.This time with a few ambitions of his own, which lead him into something all his battles in the ring and corporate boardroom could never have prepared him for.
A sudden storm drives Sam, Amanda, and their sailboat into harbor at Fishers Island. The owner of the Black Swan, a small hotel, reluctantly gives them lodging. When a fellow lodger dies in circumstances that suggest a killer in their midst, Sam must ferret out the corporate secrets behind the murder.
This sixth 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. Combining beautiful watery settings with a unique look into the underbelly of the Hamptons, these are mysteries you won't find anywhere else.