The Chatham School Affair

by Thomas H. Cook

Overview

Attorney Henry Griswald has a secret: the truth behind the tragic events the world knew as the Chatham School Affair, the controversial tragedy that destroyed five lives, shattered a quiet community, and forever scarred the young boy. Layer by layer, in The Chatham School Affair, Cook paints a stunning portrait of a woman, a school, and a town in which passionate violence seems impossible...and inevitable. "Thomas Cook's night visions, seen through a lens darkly, are haunting," raved the New York Times Book Review, and The Chatham School Affair will cement this superb writer's position as one of crime fiction's most prodigious talents, a master of the unexpected ending.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780553571936
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/01/1997
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	319,211
Product dimensions:	4.20(w) x 6.85(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Thomas H. Cook is the author of many novels, including The Chatham School Affair, winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel; Instruments of Night; Breakheart Hill; Mortal Memory; Sacrificial Ground and Blood Innocents, both Edgar Award nominees; and two early works about true crimes, Early Graves and Blood Echoes, which was also nominated for an Edgar Award. He lives in New York City and Cape Cod.

Editorial Reviews

PW gave a starred review to this "literate, compelling novel" about passion and tragedy in 1920s Cape Cod. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The destruction that passion can wreak is well demonstrated in this austere new novel by the author of Breakheart Hill (LJ 7/95). From the August day in 1926 that Elizabeth Channing comes to teach art at a private school outside Boston, Henry Griswald, son of the headmaster, finds himself a willing accomplice in the love affair between Channing and Leland Reed, a World War I veteran and fellow teacher. Now a bachelor in his seventies, Griswald looks back over a year in his adolescence that culminated in violent death and the destruction of innocent lives, a year that taught him the dangers of strong emotions. Although none of the characters except Henry is well developedit's particularly difficult to understand what attraction the lovers have for each anotherCook effectively builds the tension through the use of foreshadowing. This well-written, genre-stretching mystery starts slowly and delivers a powerful ending. Appropriate for public libraries of all sizes.Nancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle

Library Journal