Dark Water

October 7, 2002
A number of suspenseful scenes liven up a formulaic story line in the latest romantic intrigue from Sala (Snowfall; White Mountain). The novel opens with the discovery of Frank Whitman's corpse, which has lain in a lake for some 20 years since he allegedly stole a million dollars from the bank he headed. Upon learning that her long-reviled father may have been an innocent victim, Sarah Whitman returns to Maine to ensure his killer is brought to justice and to face down the townspeople who turned against her and her mother so long ago. There she meets and teams up with her childhood crush, Tony DeMarco, who has come to town out of loyalty to Sarah and her father, his onetime mentor. An attempt on Sarah's life fails to dissuade her, but when a key piece of evidence falls into her hands, the attacks intensify. Sala keeps the tension high and the pace hopping. Although the dialogue is sometimes flat-footed ("He's running scared, Ron. He'll make a mistake, and when he does, we'll get him"), and the characters have an annoying habit of reiterating what has already happened, readers will likely be turning the pages too quickly to notice.