Silver Falls opens in the rainy, damp Northwest where Rachel and Sophie now live. In the first of too many inner dialogues Rachel is trying to convince herself that she will grow to like the climate and to enjoy her role as a college professor's wife. Also depressing for Rachel is the news of the discovery of a murdered young girl who is all too similar in appearance to Sophie's murdered friend and to Sophie herself.

David's brother Caleb suddenly appears announcing his intentions to move back to town and to the half finished house he owns. Word around town is that he is probably the killer, and David portrays Caleb as the jealous brother who was always after what David had. Stephen Henry Middleton, their father and a self professed curmudgeon, also takes pains to warn Rachel that all is not quite what it seems, which becomes all too evident when another girl's body is found.

Rachel is torn between putting Sophie in the car and running or staying. Sophie is a highly gifted child with a predilection to mathematics and has found a friend in the daughter of the sheriff, which relationship Rachel is reluctant to end by fleeing.

There are essentially five characters in this story; the three Middleton men and Rachel and Sophie. Of the females, Sophie is the far more engaging, as Rachel tediously vacillates between her staid and boring husband David and the charismatic Caleb who wins the heart of her daughter Sophie.   Stuart has developed all the characters well, although she does it primarily by the use of inner dialogue which is too often  repetitive thereby dragging the story.

The Northwest seems oppressive to Rachel, although the author uses that environment well in her scene changes as it becomes apparent that a serial killer is truly amongst them. The identity of the killer is revealed to the reader fairly early, and from that point the remainder of the book seems to be devoted to Rachel and her indecisiveness.

Fans of Anne Stuart have become accustomed to her somewhat dark heroes, which makes the conflicted, clueless heroine Rachel an unexpected departure in style that is hard to appreciate. Further, characters in this form dramatically impede an author's ability to sustain any form of credible tension as well, which is all too evident in Silver Falls.

--Thea Davis