Publishers Weekly
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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. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.
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 because like the more than 25 previous books in the series the novel works well as a stand-alone, readers unfamiliar with Demarkian can jump right in.--Pitt, David Copyright 2010 Booklist