As Sam Acquillo tells us in the early pages of Back Lash, "Not everyone gets to live their adult lives orbiting a central mystery. But that's how it s been for Sam, for whom a single, horrific event has helped define his entire existence. Now that event has reached out from the deep past, an unwanted visitor, with secrets within secrets he's forced to unpack like a Russian doll, each more ominous than the one before. What is revealed would be disturbing enough if it wasn't so personal. Not a welcome development for a man who also once said, "Avoidance, rationalization, and denial are highly underrated coping strategies".The action moves from Southampton to the Bronx, where Sam once prowled in the part-time care of his father, owner of a truck repair business and a temper that stood out even on the mean streets of the city. It's here that Sam learns that evil history doesn't only repeat itself, it can improve upon the original product. That no matter how things change, the world of cops and criminals, priests, power brokers, wise guys, and even wiser old bartenders stays the same.Or gets much, much worse.

Product Description: Sam Acquillo can hide in his windswept waterfront cottage all he wants but the demons of his past are going to find him. Worse, they've teamed up with some pretty nasty demons of the present. Part-time carpenter, full-time drinker and co-conspirator with an existential mutt named Eddie Van Halen, Sam tries to lead the simple life...read more

Sailing back from Maine, Sam Acquillo, his girlfriend, Amanda Anselma, and screwball mutt Eddie Van Halen get blown off course by a dangerous gale. With damaged boat and frayed nerves, they limp into the closest harbor, which happens to be on Fishers Island, New York, a distant and altogether disassociated scrap of Long Island. A summer preserve for the oldest old money in America, it is defended by year-round denizens who safeguard their island's insularity with xenophobic fervor. Sam and Amanda are hardly welcomed with open arms, unless they're the arms of the young and beautiful Anika Fey, daughter of the owner of the Black Swan, the island's only hotel, who's only too eager to fold Sam into her embrace. But feminine wiles aren't the only hazard faced by Sam and Amanda. They're soon swept up in big-money intrigue, dark conspiracy, brutality, murder, and the machinations of high-tech millionaires, to say nothing of the autumn storms that lash the island with wind and wave. In the years since losing everything, Sam has fought his way back to an existence that even he believes is worth preserving. And now, bad timing and a broken rudder could result in the greatest loss of all--his life.