HEARTS OF SAND

A sociopathic debutante makes headlines a generation after her earlier crime spree when she returns to her Connecticut village to get murdered.

Though she’s been AWOL for 30 years, Chapin Waring has never been far from the memory of the town of Alwych. In fact, the five bank robberies she pulled with her friend Martin Veer and the two people she killed in committing them would mark Alwych’s main claim to fame, if only it were seeking fame. The news that Chapin’s been stabbed to death in the house her sister Caroline had kept meticulously maintained gives the town another dose of unwelcome publicity. Since Marty was killed in a car crash just before Chapin ran off, presumably with $250,000 that’s never turned up, the spotlight focuses on surviving members of their tight little circle: Dr. Tim Brand, who finances and runs a pro bono clinic; his twin sister, Virginia, a Congressional representative now running for the Senate; her ex, Wall Street attorney Kyle Westervan; and part-time college teacher Hope Matlock, who’s never really fit in with this moneyed crowd. Police chief Jason Battlesea and Alwych mayor Evaline Veer, Martin’s sister, recognize that they’re out past their depth and call in retired FBI profiler Gregor Demarkian (Blood in the Water, 2012) as a consultant. Insisting that the local authorities are so infatuated with Chapin’s 30-year-old crimes that they’re overlooking any evidence that might help them figure out who killed her, Gregor can’t prevent another murder but winds up the convoluted case nicely.

Taken from the side of his bride, Bennis Hannaford, Gregor is muffled. The mystery is routine but expert, the characters pleasantly recognizable types whose complexities are probed only tentatively. Average for this fine series.