'Cop Job': Raymond Chandler Would Be Proud

Sam Acquillo is not your ordinary gumshoe. In fact, he’s not a gumshoe at all. But crime seems to follow him inexorably.Sam is the creation of Chris Knopf, and “Cop Job” (The Permanent Press, $29, 288 pp.) is his sixth outing. Mr. Knopf, who divides his time between Southampton and Connecticut—where he is an executive in the advertising firm Mintz & Hoke—has written 13 novels over the last decade, and he recently became a co-publisher of The Permanent Press.

Mr. Knopf’s titles are like one-two punches—“Cop Job,” “Two Time,” “Head Wounds,” “Hard Stop” and “Black Swan.” This is appropriate, because Sam is a former professional boxer, a skill that has come in handy numerous times. But he is also a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a former executive who oversaw research and development for a large engineering firm.

Several years ago, however, Sam’s life went off the rails. His wife left him; he became estranged from his daughter; and he lost his job and his house. Sam decided the only cure was to drink himself to death, though he soon realized there was insufficient alcohol to do the trick. So he picked up his remaining possessions and moved into a little cottage in North Sea that his parents had left him.

“Cop Job” picks up about 10 years later. Sam has a job in woodworking for a local builder. He is romantically involved with one of his neighbors. He has a few loyal friends, including his pal Jackie Swaitkowski, a lawyer who specializes in representing the poor and downtrodden of Southampton. And there are many.

One of them is Alfie Aldergreen, a harmless wheelchair-bound paranoid schizophrenic, who hangs out on Main Street talking to passersby and invisible friends—some of whom occasionally give him gifts from local stores. Hence the need for Jackie’s services, Alfie’s other associates include Gandalf and the Elves of Rivendell.

The book opens with Alfie’s dead body taped to his wheelchair, as it is pulled from the waters of Hawk Pond. Jackie has called Sam to the scene. He finds her standing nearby, grief stricken.

To their surprise, they are summoned to meet with Chief of Police Ross Semple. Instead of telling them to mind their own business, which is what he usually does, he invites them to assist in the murder investigation.

It seems Alfie was a “confidential informant,” or a snitch. He is the third one to be murdered and the chief thinks members of the police department are involved. He turns to Jackie and Sam for help since, he has to admit, they have a successful track record.

In short order, the Suffolk County district attorney asks them the same favor, suggesting the three snitches, who were acquainted, knew too much about drug trafficking on the East End.

It isn’t long before others realize Sam and Jackie have taken an interest in the case. Someone warns off Sam by smashing the window of his beloved 1967 Pontiac Grand Prix. The violence escalates to an even more horrifying extreme when Sam’s daughter is savagely beaten.

How Sam and Jackie unravel the mystery I will leave for the readers to discover. Suffice it to say, I think they will be unable to put the book down. And once they’ve finished “Cop Job,” they will want to read every other book Mr. Knopf has written.

He has created a character that Raymond Chandler would be proud of, a man with a moral compass that always points north, who has no illusions about himself and isn’t capable of self-aggrandizement.

“It was just human nature,” Sam says, “to quickly forget about a tragedy soon after it happens. The impulse was to turn away and allow the needs of the present to provide cover for natural apathy and indifference.

“I had the opposite problem.”

Sam can crack wise with the best of them. Of a rather skimpy dress worn by Jackie Swaitkowski, he says, “She bought it off the midlife crisis rack.” And he’s as attuned to the social realities of the East End as Philip Marlowe was to Los Angeles.

Sam’s gentler moments come when he is hitting golf balls off the breakwater for his dog, Eddie Van Halen, to fetch. And then to sit with his girlfriend, Amanda, watching the sun set over the Little Peconic while nursing a glass of Absolut.

If there is ever a poll seeking someone to take up the mantle of Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett, I can suggest a nominee.