The Hampton Affair

When the words ""Hampton"" and ""affair"" are used together, readers can expect a tale involving money, greed, deceit and murder. Lardo's steamy first novel opens with a seemingly idyllic scene: two lovers, a teenage boy and a 40-something woman, are sunbathing by a deserted lake. They enjoy a playful ride in a dilapidated rowboat--until the boy rocks the boat so much that it capsizes. He surfaces, she does not. He sinks the boat and disappears. Michael Anthony Reo, a dapper man whose marriage into one of East Hampton's wealthiest families is floundering, witnesses the murder, but decides not to tell anybody for fear his name will be smeared all over the tabloids. Dutiful, middle-class police detective Eddy Evans is put on the case, but it's clear to the reader that the murderer is a devastatingly handsome East Hampton farm boy named Galen Miller. Harboring dreams of Hollywood stardom, Galen will do anything--including hustling his natural endowments at beach volleyball courts--to escape his life of poverty and the influence of his drunken father. Using alternating points of view, Lardo cleverly intertwines the disparate lives of his three protagonists, while rarely bringing them face to face. Sidestepping the whodunit route, he creates suspense by slowly revealing how Galen came to drown his older lover and by making the reader wonder whether he'll get away with it. Despite occasional bouts of melodrama, the novel is entertaining and, not surprisingly, makes good beach reading. (May)