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A review by ncrabb
The Last Refuge by Chris Knopf
3.0
Sam used to hear the old woman moaning in her sleep. It made for some interesting night music for the broken burnout who chucked it all and ran to his late parents’ run-down cottage on Southampton’s North Sea to drink and drink some more. He had been a lot of things—boxer, an accomplished engineer, a guy who genuinely loved his daughter, but all of that is gone, and it’s just Sam and his dog, Eddie. The old woman’s nightly moaning is the perfect backdrop to his largely wasted life.
When she stops moaning, and doesn’t start again after a prolonged period, Sam investigates. She was kind of an acquaintance of his father’s, after all. He finds the old girl floating face down in a bath tub whose drain hole had been plugged by an industrial plug whose purpose is to keep water in an enclosure much longer than would a conventional drain plug. It’s that one thing that makes Sam wonder if the old woman’s death was really an accident.
He becomes the administrator of her estate, and he begins to investigate her death, suspecting that it was not accidental.
You’ll want to read this if you enjoy snappy dialogue that can be occasionally a bit snarky and edgy. Sam, encased as he is in his cynicism, can be laugh-out-loud funny at times. You’ll come to like him despite his dissipated lifestyle, and you’ll understand how things got the way they are.
Additionally, you’ll read this because Knopf writes female characters with such vivid memorable details that they will intrigue you. Amanda, the beautiful banker, is a multi-layered woman whose mom died not long before Sam began his investigation. Jackie, the pot-smoking attorney, was my least favorite of the women described here. It seems none of the women Sam encounters is real big on wearing bras, and there’s something about his brokenness that encourages these women to practice their sometimes-ardent kissing skills on him. This ended satisfactorily enough, and it left plenty of room for the second book in the series.
When she stops moaning, and doesn’t start again after a prolonged period, Sam investigates. She was kind of an acquaintance of his father’s, after all. He finds the old girl floating face down in a bath tub whose drain hole had been plugged by an industrial plug whose purpose is to keep water in an enclosure much longer than would a conventional drain plug. It’s that one thing that makes Sam wonder if the old woman’s death was really an accident.
He becomes the administrator of her estate, and he begins to investigate her death, suspecting that it was not accidental.
You’ll want to read this if you enjoy snappy dialogue that can be occasionally a bit snarky and edgy. Sam, encased as he is in his cynicism, can be laugh-out-loud funny at times. You’ll come to like him despite his dissipated lifestyle, and you’ll understand how things got the way they are.
Additionally, you’ll read this because Knopf writes female characters with such vivid memorable details that they will intrigue you. Amanda, the beautiful banker, is a multi-layered woman whose mom died not long before Sam began his investigation. Jackie, the pot-smoking attorney, was my least favorite of the women described here. It seems none of the women Sam encounters is real big on wearing bras, and there’s something about his brokenness that encourages these women to practice their sometimes-ardent kissing skills on him. This ended satisfactorily enough, and it left plenty of room for the second book in the series.