Detective Jericho (first name never given) used to be a cop in Harlem, but ended up with PTSD. Not coincidentally, his marriage fell apart, and his wife moved with their daughter to East Hampton on Long Island. Jericho joined the force there to be close to them.

The novel Death Hampton begins with Susannah Cascaddan, the beautiful, abused wife of a property developer in East Hampton. She’s contemplating leaving her husband when, in defending herself against an attack, she knocks the man out with a wine bottle. In desperation she drags him from their beachside home to the ocean and drowns him.

When Jericho comes to question her, there are immediate romantic sparks. But there are secrets which neither of them knows that will put both their lives in danger before it’s all over.

When I started reading Death Hampton, I marked the book down as a competent story written by a less than professional writer. The writing wasn’t awful, but it was very, very pedestrian.

However, that changed when it got to the sex scenes. The sex scenes in this book are needlessly explicit and remarkably clumsy: “The spark of connection that had flashed between them over the past few weeks burst into an engulfing flame” isn’t even the worst of it.

Also the gun stuff was badly researched. Two of the characters carry .50 Glocks (a huge pistol, if it existed), with silencers (handguns can only be suppressed, not silenced, and that works best with small calibers).

Not recommended.