Someone is helping themselves to funds at the Land and Cattleman's Bank, and senior teller Susan McDowell knows who. But she doesn't report this to the police. Why not weave her own web of simple extortion that will yield a better, more personal, return?

Elsewhere, an unrelated suspicious death leads to a manhunt and the capture of confessed killer Bill Casey. When Oregon Lake County Sheriff Bud Blair reads the autopsy report, he begins to suspect that someone other than Casey is the actual killer.

Set in a sparsely settled, high-desert landscape of fault scarps, hot springs, big lakes, and timbered mountains, Spider Silk is also a love story. Burned badly by divorce, Bud steers shy of women, but his work makes it almost impossible to avoid contact with Nancy Sixkiller, the beautiful Yakama Native American who managed the emergency Service Center for Lake County, Oregon. When a chase and gunfight injure Bud, and Nancy takes on the role of caregiver, feelings begin to become mutual.