Aptly subtitled "A Novel of Secrets," this dark, probing tale examines the destructive ripple effects of a child's death on those around her--especially after doubts arise whether it was accident, suicide, or murder. In the harrowing opening pages, 16-year-old Katherine Chadwick ODs on heroin while babysitting little Mallory, daughter of her parents' best friends. Then the tale leaps forward nine years: both couples' marriages are in ruins; Katherine's father, once a schoolteacher, is now a bruising "escort" for a reform school in the Texas outback called Cold Springs; and his next assignment is to capture none other than Mallory, now 15 and in trouble.

Texas native Riordan, whose Tres Navarre series has earned acclaim and awards, evokes the landscapes around Cold Springs with vividness and authority, and also brings that sensibility to the book's Bay Area scenes: Chadwick ... stepped out into the growing gloom of the evening. Down the block, he could hear the lowrider cruising, its stereo setting off car alarms all across the neighborhood like a bloodhound flushing quail. But it's the book's complex plot and richly realized people--most notably its troubled teenagers (Riordan is a middle-school teacher)--that give Cold Springs substance and heft. You may need to persist through some tangled exposition in the first 75 pages or so, but the payoff is well worth it. The long climax offers a stunning series of cascading revelations, including a final kicker that changes everything. Riordan is the real deal. --Nicholas H. Allison


From Publishers Weekly
Riordan is a middle-school teacher in San Antonio, which explains why this unorthodox suspense novel-Riordan's first break from his Edgar-, Shamus- and Anthony-winning series about private detective Tres Navarre (The Devil Went Down to Austin, etc.)-centers around two very different kinds of schools. One is Laurel Heights, a private middle school in San Francisco, where a dedicated staff deals with the needs of the privileged children of the affluent. The other is Cold Springs, a survival school in the mountain country of Texas, where a former army Ranger rescues teenagers who have slipped over the edge. Linking the two schools is Chadwick, a huge man who looks like George Washington; he teaches history at Laurel Heights and then becomes an escort at Cold Springs (run by his old Vietnam buddy) when his own teenaged daughter, Katherine, dies of a drug overdose. Chadwick, who blames himself for Katherine's death (he was about to leave his wife for Ann Zedman, the woman who runs Laurel Heights), is a complex and interesting character, and the pressures on him are believable and absorbing-especially when Ann's daughter, Mallory, becomes a Cold Springs candidate. Riordan tilts the playing field by introducing a truly dysfunctional family, the Montroses, and tracing a string of murders related to Katherine's death. Knife-throwing, wild shooting and hairbreadth escapes up the ante, sometimes to the point of overkill, but Riordan is so good at moving his story along-and showing how fragile children's lives can be-that most readers will forgive him his excesses. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
*Starred Review* Riordan, a relative newcomer with four previous books to his credit, has walked away with just about every prestigious mystery-writing award there is: the Edgar, the Shamus, and the Anthony. As soon as you start reading Riordan, you understand the acclaim. His voice is fresh yet sure, with insights so trenchant they nearly provoke tears. And Riordan's characters, even the minor ones, are achingly believable. And the action proceeds realistically from the strengths and flaws of the characters, with some sucker punches from fate thrown in. This time Riordan rests his series hero, Tres Navarre, and takes us on a journey with Chadwick, whose job, born out of his own heartbreak, is to escort drug-addicted kids to Cold Springs, a tough-love wilderness school in Texas. Throughout the book, one day haunts Chadwick, the day in 1993 when he discovered his teen daughter dead from a heroin overdose. Chadwick quits his middle-school teaching job, leaves his marriage, and jettisons most of the other aspects of his life to devote himself to tracking down troubled teens. Ten years after his daughter's death, Chadwick's ex-principal and ex-lover asks him to escort her daughter (whom Chadwick's daughter was baby-sitting when she overdosed) to Cold Springs. This simple act lands Chadwick in the complexities of a murder case that can only be solved by confronting the drug dealers of his daughter's past. Gut-wrenching. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
Rick Riordan is the author of Big Red Tequila, The Widower’s Two-Step, The Last King of Texas, and, most recently, The Devil Went Down to Austin, which was nominated for both the Shamus and the Anthony awards. He lives in San Antonio, Texas, where he is at work on his sixth novel of suspense.


From the Hardcover edition.


Review
Rick Riordan is the author of Big Red Tequila, The Widower?s Two-Step, The Last King of Texas, and, most recently, The Devil Went Down to Austin, which was nominated for both the Shamus and the Anthony awards. He lives in San Antonio, Texas, where he is at work on his sixth novel of suspense.


From the Hardcover edition.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The Edgar, Shamus, and Anthony award-winning Rick Riordan delivers a spellbinding novel of a man on an edge so extreme that his fall will destroy not only him--but all that he holds dear.
Cold Springs
Chadwick’s life was balanced on a knife’s edge--his career, his marriage, his
relationship with his dangerously troubled daughter. And then one autumn night, the worst possible thing happened….
Now, a decade later, Chadwick’s heart is on the mend. Working for an old military buddy, he saves kids for a living, escorting troubled teens to a Texas wilderness school that specializes in the toughest brand of love.
Until he gets a phone call that threatens to shatter his new life.
Mallory Zedman is taking the same terrible path Chadwick’s own daughter once took. Defiant and out of control, Mallory is determined to destroy herself and anyone who tries to stop her. No sooner does Chadwick snatch her off the streets than he discovers she is wanted for questioning in a brutal murder--a slaying that seems directly linked to Chadwick’s past.To save Mallory, tough love will not be enough. Chadwick must find the truth behind the murder--and in doing so revisit the infidelities, shattered promises, and violent passions that cracked his world apart. And he must jeopardize the one thing he still has left to lose--a slim hope of redemption.

SYNOPSIS

The Edgar, Shamus, and Anthony award-winning Rick Riordan delivers a spellbinding novel of a man on an edge so extreme that his fall will destroy not only him--but all that he holds dear.

FROM THE CRITICS

Kirkus Reviews