Jennifer Jackson – Literary Agent

Bad Bird: A Mystery by Chris Knopf

As sole witness to the crash of a Cessna in the Hamptons, lawyer Jackie Swaitkowski retrieves the camera case that pilot Eugenie Birkson tossed out of the plane just before it exploded. Wanting in on the investigation, Jackie offers to defend Eugenie’s husband during the accident investigation, but her real interest is in the pictures on Eugenie’s camera. As she puzzles over the images, she finds faces she recognizes and is led back to her own damaged past and to her long-lost brother. Tenacious in pursuit of answers, Jackie takes up residence in her office after being attacked in her home. This sequel to Short Squeeze: A Mystery (2010) continues the series spun-off from Knopf’s acclaimed Sam Acquillo novels. Jackie, a lawyer inclined to skirt the law, is persistent to the point of bullheadedness and sometimes too fearless for her own good. Readers may want to scream warnings to her in the suspenseful final pages of this fine hard-boiled crime novel, which effectively combines action and introspection. — Booklist

Bad Bird: A Mystery by Chris Knopf

In Knopf’s engaging second Hamptons mystery to feature defense attorney Jacqueline “Jackie” Swaitkowski (after 2010’s Short Squeeze: A Mystery), Jackie witnesses the crash of a small airplane that kills pilot Eugenie Birkson, and later retrieves the camera case Eugenie tosses from the plane. It doesn’t take much to pique Jackie’s curiosity, and before long she’s involved with tracking down information about Eugenie and the five photos on the camera’s memory card. Her investigation uncovers a startling link to her own family’s history as well as Eugenie’s. The excellent supporting cast–Sam Acquillo, the star of the author’s first four Hamptons mysteries; Jackie’s boyfriend, Harry Goodlander; Southampton cop Joe Sullivan; computer guru Randall Dodge–provide valuable assistance when Jackie’s efforts stir up threats. Domestic problems and Homeland Security issues enliven a plot with slick twists that should keep readers switching their bets to the very end. –Publishers Weekly

Elysiana by Chris Knopf

Smart dialogue and sharp social observations distinguish this stand-alone thriller from Knopf (Short Squeeze and four other Hamptons mysteries). In the summer of 1969, life on the sunny New Jersey resort island of Elysiana simmers as town cops feud with the beach patrol, fed-up wives elude their slimy husbands, local politicians double-cross each other, lots of dope flows everywhere, and various needy, wounded people—such as a brain-damaged lifeguard, a young woman from Chicago who fled her lecherous dad, and a smalltime criminal who’s also a maniac surfer—look for reasons to go on. Knopf sets up a lot of competing characters capable of semiclever scheming to get what they want, then shows a massive hurricane ripping their plans and their island apart. Like John D. Macdonald or Charles Willeford in a lighter mood, he’s unsentimentally fond of his characters and tentatively hopeful about their ability to salvage something from the wreckage around them. –Publishers Weekly

Elysiana by Chris Knopf

As the 1969 summer season begins on the New Jersey barrier island of Elysiana—“an assortment of seashore amenities and profound dissociation”—the cops and the lifeguards prepare for the annual turf war made necessary by a loopy municipal charter and warring city politicians. A druglord arrives in his GTO to murder a local who stiffed him. A drugged-out Chicago girl figuratively washes up on the beach with no clear memory of how she got there, and a local thief and surfer marvels at the ease of stealing eight-track tape players from cars. A full baker’s dozen major characters swirl and collide as if in Brownian motion, moved by elemental forces like wind and tide and lesser things like work and whim. Signs and portents hint that something life changing, if not quite apocalyptic, will affect them all. Elysiana is a departure for Knopf, whose Sam Acquillo mysteries have won reviewers’ raves, but he nails it. The seemingly shambling plot proves ultimately to be sly, and Knopf’s sweet-spirited style recalls memories spurred by faded home movies of long-ago vacations. His bio says that he was a New Jersey lifeguard back in the day, and he captures the zeitgeist of the Shore perfectly. Every “shoobie” on the beach who eschews MTV’s odious Jersey Shore should be reading Elysiana this season. –Booklist, Starred Review

Short Squeeze by Chris Knopf

Southampton attorney Jackie Swaitkowski, a supporting character in Knopf’s Sam Acquillo series (Head Wounds, Two Time), takes center stage in this series debut as she is hired to help a man resolve an unpleasant domestic situation. His sister-in-law has moved into and taken over his house, convinced she’s the owner because she loaned her late sister money. But the case is not as simple as it appears. Jackie’s client is fatally run down, and when she’s hired to settle his estate, things turn really ugly as it becomes clear to the killer that Jackie is no pushover. VERDICT Readers, fasten your seatbelts for a roller-coaster ride as Knopf’s intelligent, savvy protagonist works her wiles solving whodunit and why. – Library Journal, Starred Review