The Crazy School by Cornelia Read

                THUMPER AWARD

Title: The Crazy School

Author: Cornelia Read

Genre: Thriller

Rating: unfinished

Review Date: 6/17/2010

Paperback: 352 pages

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing; (February 12, 2010)

ISBN: 044619820X 

FTC Disclosure: Won in a contest

At the start of Edgar-finalist Read's gutsy second Madeline Dare novel (after 2006's A Field of Darkness), Dare, a 26-year-old former debutante, takes a job in the fall of 1989 as a history teacher at Santangelo Academy, an unorthodox therapeutic boarding school in western Massachusetts dominated by its authoritarian cape-wearing headmaster, David Santangelo. When a student, Mooney LeChance, reveals that his girlfriend, Fay Perry, is pregnant, Dare keeps Mooney's secret while the couple is confined to the Farm, a punishment dorm in the woods. The book's first half focuses on character—the woefully misguided souls who teach at Santangelo, the students in all their dysfunctional glory—but the action picks up when Mooney and Fay die from drinking poisoned punch after a birthday party at the Farm, and Dare is arrested for her role in preparing the fatal beverage. While some characters, like the social-climbing parents who drop in between vacations, verge on stereotype, Read graphically depicts the depressing underside of a supposedly elite private school.

Okay, I really wanted to like this book. It had all the earmarks of a book that I’d thoroughly enjoy.  Teenagers, private school, dark secrets—what’s not to like.  Generally, if I’ve not connected with a book in 100 pages, I’ll quit. Well, I held out to page 136 and still no connection.  So I’ll have to leave this one unfinished, which I hate doing.  I think all the psycho babble (and hey I knew there would be some) look at the title already, “The CRAZY School” just left me crazy.

Series

Madeline Dare

1. A Field of Darkness (2006)

2. The Crazy School (2008)