Plot Synopsis

First installment of the network's newest mystery movie franchise "Emma Fielding Mysteries" based on the series of novels by famed historical archeologist turned fiction writer Dana Cameron. Archaeology professor Emma Fielding is thrilled to be back in the coastal Maine village where she spent summers as a girl, conducting a dig with students on her stepmother, Pauline's property. She is hoping to prove her late father's theory that this was the site of the New World's first settlement. The dig soon becomes challenged, however, when a local fisherman shows up dead in one of the dig site trenches on the same day that Emma's department head, Tony Markham, arrives to observe her and her students. FBI agents Tim Conner arrives to investigate the murder and, despite his distaste for "amateur detectives" like Emma, the two have an easy banter from the start. Things get even more dangerous when Emma realizes her map of the dig site is stolen; Tony expresses concern for the safety of the students in light of the murder, and the town's resident "bad boy" seems awfully eager to rekindle his past with Emma. And after she discovers that her motel room has been ransacked and her rental car's brake line cut, it becomes clear that someone is after whatever buried treasure they think might lie beneath the surface at her excavation site, and will stop at nothing to get it. Emma convinces Conner to let her assist in his investigation, but only in an unofficial capacity. With more dead bodies piling up rather quickly, and a fire set at her stepmother's house, Emma and Conner must work together to sort out the true suspects from those whom coincidence have placed near the murdered men, and quickly narrow down the list before Emma becomes the killer's next victim.