Deep Dive (Sam Acquillo Mysteries) (Sam Acquillo Mysteries, 9) - Hardcover

You're Dead, Knopf's 15th novel, was released in December, 2018. Deep Dive, 9th in his Sam Acquillo Hamptons Mystery Series, follows Tango Down, 2018 and Back Lash, 2017, which received a starred review from Booklist. Dead Anyway, featuring off-the-grid avenger Arthur Cathcart, received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Kirkus and Library Journal and won the 2013 Nero Award. His short story Kill Switch was short-listed for the 2016 Derringer Award. A Little Cariņoso appeared in the April, 2017 edition of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. Crossing Harry was included in Akashic's New Haven Noir, released August, 2017. Knopf is a retired advertising executive who splits his time between Connecticut and Southampton, NY, with his wife and two Lakeland Terriers.

Why did Elton Darby, a high-level employee of Worldwide Loventeers, an international philanthropic organization, fall out of a second-story guest bedroom to his death? That's the mystery Sam Acquillo must crack in Knopf's clever ninth whodunit starring the Hamptons carpenter and occasional PI (after 2017's Tango Down). Sam's brought into the case when he gets a call from his billionaire friend, Burton Lewis, who was also staying at the home of Joshua Edelstein, a supporter of the Loventeers. Burton, who claims to have been taking a walk when he heard the fatal thud, is worried he'll be the prime suspect; his watch was in the dead man's fingers, and there are scratch marks on Burton's arm. Burton asserts that Elton made a pass at him, resulting in the scratches and the watch ending up with Elton. The Southampton police detective on the case warns Sam that Burton and everyone else in the Edelstein home that night are lying. Suspicions that Elton was intentionally pushed grow after a second death, which is clearly murder. Witty byplay between Sam and his significant other helps keep the action moving. Robert B. Parker fans will find a lot to like. --Publishers Weekly

A houseguest's fatal plunge from a neighbor's second-story window spells trouble for Southampton carpenter/private eye Sam Acquillo and even bigger trouble for one of his closest friends. Billionaire attorney/philanthropist Burton Lewis says he doesn't remember the events that left Elton Darby dead in Joshua and Rosie Edelstein's rhododendrons. But since Darby is still clutching Burton's Patek Philippe in his fist, the police swiftly come up with a theory of his death that's circumstantially confirmed by the accounts of the Edelsteins and Violeta Zaragoza, their Puerto Rican housekeeper. Hauled off in handcuffs, Burton makes bail with the push of a button on his cellphone, but he's still on the hook for the murder of Darby, a staffer for the charity Volunteering with Love, aka the Loventeers. So Sam, whose search for the quiet life seems eternally doomed to failure (Tango Down, 2017, etc.), follows a trail that first appears when he's suavely threatened by Art Reynolds, the attorney who chairs the Loventeers board, and Mikolaj Galecki, his hulking, multilingual personal assistant, and realizes that the FBI also has a strongly possessive interest in the case. Since there's nothing like threats and official warnings to rev Sam's engine, he's soon headed for Puerto Rico on the strength of a cryptic tip, with the plan of masquerading as a carpenter call it method acting in order to infiltrate the local chapter of the Loventeers, which definitely needs and rewards infiltration. From the dedication to the closing acknowledgments, Knopf clearly intends Sam's ninth adventure as a valentine to the island, and the long sequence set there, emphasizing the ways the struggle to recover from Hurricane Maria are heightened by long-standing corruption, is the clear highlight of this installment. Only when Sam high-tails it back to Long Island as if suddenly remembering that his No. 1 job is not to investigate the Loventeers but to clear his old friend do things settle into a more familiar, though hardly a reassuring, groove. Knopf balances the usual Long Island byplay with an unflinching look at Puerto Rico's distress. --Kirkus Reviews