Chris Knopf

Sailing back from Maine, Sam Acquillo, his girlfriend, Amanda Anselma, and screwball mutt Eddie Van Halen get blown off course by a dangerous gale....

It's bad enough when someone you know is brutally murdered; it's worse when the guy was a paranoid schizophrenic helplessly bound to a wheelchair....

As Sam Acquillo tells us in the early part of Back Lash, "Not everyone gets to live their adult lives orbiting a central mystery." But that's how it's been for Sam....

Sam Acquillo has spent most of his time in the Hamptons hanging out with the other half of the moneyed wonderland cops and bartenders, carpenters, store clerks, and firemen. He couldn't care less about the concerns of the one percent....  

Organizational psychologist Dr. Waters is a happily solitary guy with a few deep attachments, including to his boss Paresh Rajput, the owner of a thriving hi-tech aerospace company. Until something really bad happens to CEO Rajput....

A routine visit to one of Sam Acquillo's job sites becomes anything but. The home's owner, Victor Bollings, is lying in a pool of blood, the back of his head bashed in....