When a hard-boiled hero lands in the Hamptons, mystery is sure to follow

In real estate, those in the know consider it an imperative, the sine qua non, the be-all-end-all. In the world of literary mysteries and detective fiction, it might not be quite so significant, but it’s still responsible for determining a lot of the details and many of the most important choices made by good guys and bad guys alike:

Location, location, location.

For Agatha Christie, the social order and interpersonal politics of the archetypal tiny English village not only define the character of her indefatigable detective, Miss Marple, they provide her with a template of human nature that allows her to solve baffling crimes, even in the more complicated contexts of much larger urban centers.

Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Ross McDonald all had their hard-boiled heroes bumped up against the West Coast retaining wall that put a stop to the free-ranging, questing and expansionist American spirit. Steeped in cynicism and hammering out their own code of morality and chivalry, Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade and Lew Archer understood that California and all it stood for determined the mindset and machinations of both kooky clients and calculating criminals.

Living on board the Busted Flush, a houseboat he won in a poker game, John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee had a front row seat in Fort Lauderdale’s Bahia Mar marina for observing the antics of both the well-to-do and the ne’er-do-wells of south Florida, close enough to the action to be part of the show when pressed into service as a “salvage expert.”

Now, joining their ranks, courtesy of author and part-time East End resident Chris Knopf, is Sam Acquillo, corporate refugee, ex-amateur boxer, occasional carpenter, bruised closet romantic, philosophical drinker, and a detective in spite of himself. His setting? That would be Southampton.

Neither Mr. Knopf nor his lead character are newcomers to Southampton, and that is only one of many back stories they share. The author has been coming here for 25 years, and designed and helped build his own house in Southampton, working with his friend John Acquino, who also provided him with the mold for his hero’s name.

And Sam Acquillo, a graduate of Southampton High School, has worked his way through four East End mysteries in four books already—“The Last Refuge,” “Two Time,” “Head Wounds” and the recently released “Hard Stop”—all while living in a small house in North Sea that he has done a lot of work on himself since inheriting it from his father.

Mr. Knopf, whose “Head Wounds” was recently awarded the Ben Franklin prize for best mystery of 2008 by the Independent Book Publishers Association, will be engaging in a time-honored local literary tradition this weekend, reading from his latest Sam Acquillo mystery, “Hard Stop,” at Canio’s Books in Sag Harbor on Saturday, June 27, at 6 p.m.

And if you ask the author—whose day job, with his wife, Mary, is running their firm, Mintz & Hoke Communications Group in Avon, Connecticut—why he picked Southampton as the milieu for this series, he has a number of ready responses.

“It’s physically exquisitely beautiful,” he said in a recent interview. “And it’s dominated by the cosmopolitan class of New York City, the very wealthy in a playground, so you have the consequences of having these kinds of people mixing with regular folks, creating an evolving social dynamic.

“The area is peopled with wonderful eccentric characters and there is a tremendously rich amount of material to draw from ... As Sam transitions from scene to scene in his car, he has this place to engage with,” he said, giving him plenty to chew on in his first-person narration.

The “evolving social dynamic” that Mr. Knopf referenced not only provides situations that help to define Sam’s character based on his responses to them, it also offers opportunities for asides on the changing character of the community.

Habitués of the East End bar circuit can fill in the name of their own favorite haunt upon reading descriptions of such fictional locales as this one, from “Head Wounds”:

“I left him there to chow down and drove over to the Pequot, the crummy little joint next to the marina in Sag Harbor run by Paul Hodges and his daughter Dorothy. It was the only place around where you could avoid the plague of sophistication spreading through the Hamptons, infecting even indigenous dive bars. The clientele was mostly fishermen or mechanics working the marina, so the olfactory ambiance alone was enough to frighten off normal people, even if you could stand the smell of Hodges’s cooking.”

The books are filled with these spot-on evocations of a sense of place, making the East End itself as much of a principal character as Sam Acquillo and his colorful associates and adversaries.

“There is a natural interest in the Hamptons,” Mr. Knopf said, “in the U.S. and all around the world.” Using the East End for his setting, he said, allows him to “take advantage of that extra attention. Plus, it’s an opportunity to shake up all the stereotypes” that people have about the area.

Although he says he has been a writer all his life, the 1973 graduate of Dickinson College confessed that he had been trying to get a novel published since completing his graduate studies in creative writing at London University.

More than 25 years ago, he wrote the very first Sam Acquillo book and passed it on to his agent, Mary Jack Wald. She shopped it around, including to Martin Shepard at the Permanent Press in Sag Harbor, thinking he might like it because of the local milieu. Mr. Shepard and other editors liked the first effort but said he needed to do a lot of work.

Some years later, his agent asked him if he had ever rewritten the book. “Oh, you mean they weren’t just saying that to be nice?” he asked, incredulously. “They actually liked it?” She patiently explained to him that’s why they asked him to rewrite.

As serendipity would have it, a month before she checked in with him, he happened to have figured out how to fix the book. After her call, he rewrote about two-thirds of it, he said, and Mr. Shepard and his wife, Judy, “picked it up.”

The partnership has proven successful for both sides. “I’ve gotten great critical reviews because Marty is my publisher,” Mr. Knopf said. For his part, as long as Permanent Press retains the rights to the Sam Acquillo books, Mr. Shepard can sell the rights to foreign publishers, resulting in additional revenue and copies of Sam Acquillo mysteries all over the world.

Typically, authors who gain success under Mr. Shepard’s guidance move on to bigger publishing houses, Mr. Knopf said, but “I wanted to stay with Marty because I like him, and as a moral issue.” As a result, he has come up with a creative solution: keep Sam Acquillo with Permanent Press while setting up a deal with St. Martin for a new series featuring Sam’s friend Jackie Swaitkowski. The author admitted that “working with two publishers could be a little sketchy, but I think I can do it.”

As for Ms. Swaitkowski, a tough-talking female attorney, the area of operations will be—where else?—Southampton.

“You’d be hard-pressed,” the author said, “to come up with a better setting.”