PARADISE LOST

Cochise County, Arizona, sheriff Joanna Brady (Devil’s Claw, 2000, etc.) and her new husband Butch Dixon are sneaking a weekend away when word arrives that her daughter Jenny, 12, and her friend Dora, who sneaked off themselves from their Girl Scout campsite for a cigarette, have discovered the nude, battered body of a woman. When Dora’s mother can’t be found, and her home turns out to be a meth factory, Deputy Frank Montoya arranges for the girls to stay with Joanna’s former in-laws. Jealous of the in-laws and disapproving of the trashy young Dora, Joanna’s busybody mom calls in Children’s Services, who put the youngster in foster care, but she flees—and then is brutally murdered. Is someone now after Jenny, too? A medic-alert bracelet identifies the dead woman as Constance Haskell, whose husband Ron cleaned out their bank account and signed himself in to Pathways to Paradise, a rehab for gamblers, where everyone from the gate guard to the owners is untherapeutically hostile. While Joanna soothes her daughter, calms her mother, finds time for her bridegroom, and covers the county with too few officers, an autopsy report indicates that Dora was pregnant, and the evidence leads to a doctor’s family in Phoenix. There’ll be another dead body, an unlikely confession, and a flying tackle at a Lexus dealership before Jenny swears off cigarettes forever, Joanna’s mom breaks down in tears for the first time ever, and Joanna and Butch can turn off the cell phone and snuggle.

Domestic drama à la Mary Higgins Clark, though without the brand names, played out in 115-degree weather. Can a special on Lifetime Network for Women be far behind?