Hearts of Sand

Starred review from July 1, 2013
As the sophisticated plot of the 28th entry (after 2012’s Blood in the Water) in this superior fair-play whodunit series shows, Haddam is still going strong. As a teen, debutante Chapin Waring veered into a life of crime, pulling off violent bank robberies that left corpses in their wake. But before she could be caught, she vanished, only to resurface 30 years later in her affluent hometown of Alwych, Conn. She’s soon discovered with a knife in her back on the floor of the uninhabited house she grew up in, which her family has scrupulously maintained. Waring’s murder, no less a sensation than her teenage crime wave, leads the hapless local police to send for brilliant detective Gregor Demarkian, who insists that it would be premature to link the present-day killing with the bank heists three decades ago. Demarkian methodically reads, talks, and thinks his way to a logical solution that few will anticipate. Agent: Don Maass, Donald Maass Literary Agency.

August 1, 2013
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.

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September 1, 2013
Retired FBI profiler Gregor Demarkian is intrigued by his latest freelance job: a woman has been murdered in the wealthy Connecticut town of Alwych, a woman who disappeared 30-odd years ago and only recently reappeared in the town where she grew up. And here's the kicker: she disappeared all those years ago after it was revealed that she wasn't merely an Alwych debutante, but also a bank robber and, quite possibly, a murderer. Why did she return to the town that has never forgotten her and certainly never forgiven her? Who killed her and why? As usual, the story is told in graceful prose, Haddam using the mystery as a way of commenting, gently (and sometimes not so gently), on the phenomenon of the small-town fabulously wealthy. Series fans will, as always, enjoy watching the clever and occasionally cantankerous Gregor put the pieces of the puzzle together. And becauselike the more than 25 previous books in the seriesthe novel works well as a stand-alone, readers unfamiliar with Demarkian can jump right in.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)