Reading "Swimming in the Shadows" is a tiresome enterprise. There is quite a length of commitment to the story and it's bland characters before anything remotely interesting occurs.

Susan/Jennifer is a fairly meek protagonist. She spends a lot of time pondering her cover and whether or not the people in her sleepy country town are likely to watch the tv show "Disappeared!" which has her as one of its main focal points in the episode that is currently screening. She is also worried that her fiancé Rob may just tune in and find out some information about his wife to be that he was never expecting.

In terms of suspense and thrill, there are a few red herrings that are thrown out to keep you guessing. It feeds upon our nature of wanting to get to the bottom of a mystery - did Susan leave her husband Alan because he was abusing her? Why did she turn and leave her world behind?

In the present time, you also wonder about her new love interest. Rob is acting strange when a local girl goes missing, and you begin to suspect that he knows more than what he's telling the police and Susan. And there's those rumours going about the town that he left his old school teaching post for something similar happening...

The new doctor in town at Susan's health centre is a bit of a loose cannon. When he gets drunk he becomes obnoxious and volatile - he's on to Susan's game, and he has secrets of his own that he wants to hide - but what if he slips up and lets Susan's identity out of the bag?

When the "Disappeared!" story brings attention from psychics and the like, a body is unearthed that is identified as Jennifer. Concerned that her ex-husband will take the fall for her "murder" she sets about trying to cut ties with her old life so that she can move forward in her new one, but will Alan be as forgiving as she expects him to be?

There's a lot of waiting in the book for something interesting to happen. We seem to rehash the same information several times so it's a bit slow going. The last third of the book is by far the most interesting, but it does seem like a bit of an unfair punishment to wait that long for something good to happen.