Two Time

The New York Times Book Review Sunday, June 4, 2006 CRIME / Marilyn Stasio (Recommended Summer Reading) Beaches are good places for brooding, you’ll have noticed, and Sam Acquillo, the protagonist pf Chris Knopf’s TWO TIME (Permanent Press, $26), is a world-class brooder. A dropout from the corporate world, Sam lives in a humble cottage on Little Peconic Bay in the Long Island resort town of Southampton, where he drinks a bit, fiddles with his 1967 Pontiac Grand Prix and from time to time pulls himself out of his habitual funk to run a quiet, intelligent investigation into local events that pique his curiosity—like the inexplicable firebomb attack on an investment adviser who was sitting in his Lexus in a restaurant parking lot. Knopf has a touch I like—cool, careful, reflective—and a great ear for the comic eccentricities of the human voice. Maybe it comes from sitting out on a deck, listening to the gulls squawk.