Cold Springs

April 7, 2003
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.

May 15, 2003
Cold Springs is an east Texas wilderness boarding school for troubled teens. Haunted by his own unresolved guilt over his daughter's death from a heroin overdose nine years earlier, ex-teacher Chadwick now makes his living escorting children into this boot camp for losers, giving them a second chance whether they want it or not. When an ex-lover asks him to locate her self-destructive 15-year-old daughter and take her to Cold Springs, Chadwick finds himself involved in a case of blackmail, murder, and financial skullduggery. Strong characters, tense situations, and vivid action sequences make this book hard to put down. And Riordan's description of the school's rehabilitation program will prove fascinating to anyone who has had to deal with a rebellious teen. This is not part of Riordan's multiple-award-winning "Tres Navarre" series (The Devil Went Down to Austin), but it is an essential purchase for all public libraries.-Ken St. Andre, Phoenix P.L.

Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from March 15, 2003
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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)