Hampton Sisters

Bernard Conners joins company with the sequestered, eccentric, amiably self-indulged WASP establishment of Old Hampton, Long Island, in a riveting story of death and romance. The sisters of the title are rich, beautiful, single, desirable, but the great shabby-genteel shorefront estate they inhabit reeks of murder and madness.Lydia, the elder sister, an amateur ornithologist and gentle recluse, wears monogrammed sweaters and sensible shoes. Emily, the younger, a star amateur tennis player and budding novelist, lives rakishly and divides her seductive attentions between her would-be publisher, and a handsome South Hampton lover, who doubles as a pediatrician in New York.The action centers on Emily, whose amorous manipulations, take her and her lovers back and forth between the fast-paced publishing world of Manhattan and their leisurely, slightly atrophied country club in Old Hampton. In a construction as finely detailed as a diamond-encrusted Swiss watch - or a self-destructing Tinguely sculpture - the author keeps the reader in delightful suspense right to the bottom of the last page.