Thomas H. Cook - The Chatham School Affair

Praise ForTHE CHATHAM SCHOOL AFFAIR
Winner of the 1996 Edgar Award for Best
Novel! And chosen By The Drood Review,
as one of 1996s Ten Best Mysteries.

THOMAS COOK IS AN ARTIST,
A PHILOSOPHER, AND A MAGICIAN;
HIS STORY IS SPELLBINDING.

The Drood Review of Mystery

Swift, thoughtful and plausible As in nearly all good crime fiction, the moral and practical complications expand like ripples in a pond. The Chatham School Affair is the tragic, lyrically told story of a sordid scandal, the towns revenge on the perpetrators, and one mans long-delayed journey toward redemption.

The Boston Herald

MOODY, ELOQUENT.

The San Francisco Chronicle Examiner

Cook is one of the most lyrical of todays novelists. His prose flows effortlessly, yet beneath its rhythm Cooks characters perform the most shocking and deadly of deeds. An extraordinary writer.

Sun, Calgary, Alberta

TRANSFIXING SUSPENSE.

Booknews from The Poisoned Pen

[Cooks] portrait of a smalland ultimately small-mindedtown is a skillful one. And just when you think the puzzle is complete, Cook artfully presents yet another piecerearranging all your expectations.

The Orlando Sentinel

PRAISE FOR THOMAS H. COOKS
BREAKHEART HILL

Expert storytelling haunting gains power and resonance with each twist.

Publishers Weekly

Haunting, lyrical a mesmerizing tale of love and betrayal.

Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine

Intense Impossible to put down.

Rendezvous

Cook has crafted a novel of stunning power, with a climax that is so unexpected the reader may think he has cheated. But there is no cheating here, only excellent storytelling.

Booklist

Cooks writing is distinguished by finely cadenced prose, superior narrative skills, and the authors patient love for the doomed characters who are the object of his attention. Highly recommended.

Library Journal (starred review)

MORE PRAISE FOR THOMAS H. COOK

Cooks night visions, seen through a lens darkly, are haunting.

The New York Times Book Review

A gifted novelist, intelligent and compassionate.

Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Review of Books

MORTAL MEMORY

Cook builds a family portrait in which violence seems both impossible and inevitable. One of [Mortal Memorys] greatest accomplishments is the way it defies expectations surprising and devastating.

Chicago Tribune

Haunting Dont pick this up unless youve got time to read it through because you will do so whether you plan to or not.

Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine

EVIDENCE OF BLOOD

In [his] previous novels Cook has shown himself to be a writer of poetic gifts, constantly pushing against the presumed limits of crime fiction. In this fine new book, he has gone to the edge, and survived triumphantly.

Charles Champlin, Los Angeles Times Book Review

A highly satisfying story, strong in color and atmosphere, intelligent and exacting.

The New York Times Book Review

ALSO BY THOMAS H. COOK

FICTION

Peril
The Interrogation
Instruments of Night
Breakheart Hill
Mortal Memory
Evidence of Blood
The City When It Rains
Night Secrets
Streets of Fire
Flesh and Blood
Sacrificial Ground
The Orchids
Tabernacle
Elena
Blood Innocents

NONFICTION

Early Graves
Blood Echoes

For Kate Miciak

Sine qua non

He sees enough who doth his darkness see.

LORD HERBERT OF CHERBURY

M y father had a favorite line. Hed taken it from Milton, and he loved to quote it to the boys of Chatham School. Standing before them on opening day, his hands thrust deep into his trouser pockets, hed pause a moment, facing them sternly. Be careful what you do, hed say, for evil on itself doth back recoil. In later years he could not have imagined how wrong he was, nor how profoundly I knew him to be so.

Sometimes, particularly on one of those bleak winter days so common to New England, wind tearing at the trees and shrubbery, rain battering the roofs and windows, I feel myself drift back to my fathers world, my own youth, the village he loved and in which I still live. I glance outside my office window and see the main street of Chatham as it once wasa scattering of small shops, a ghostly parade of antique cars with their lights mounted on sloping fenders. In my mind, the dead return to life, assume their earthly shapes. I see Mrs. Albertson delivering a basket of quahogs to Kesslers Market; Mr. Lawrence lurching forward in his homemade snowmobile, skis on the front, a set of World War I tank tracks on the back, all hooked to the battered chassis of an old roadster pickup. He waves as he goes by, a gloved hand in the timeless air.

Standing once again at the threshold of my past, I feel fifteen again, with a full head of hair and not a single liver spot, heaven far away, no thought of hell. I even sense a certain goodness at the core of life.

Then, from out of nowhere, I think of her again. Not as the young woman Id known so long ago, but as a little girl, peering out over a glittering blue sea, her father standing beside her in a white linen suit, telling her what fathers have always told their children: that the future is open to them, a field of grass, harboring no dark wood. In my mind I see her as she stood in her cottage that day, hear her voice again, her words like distant bells, sounding the faith she briefly held in life. Take as much as you want, Henry. There is plenty.

In those days, the Congregationalist Church stood at the eastern entrance of Chatham, immaculately white save for its tall, dark spire. There was a bus stop at the southern corner of the church, marked by a stubby white pillar, the site where Boston buses picked up and deposited passengers who, for whatever reason, had no liking for the train.

On that August afternoon in 1926, Id been sitting on the church steps, reading some work of military history, my addiction at the time, when the bus pulled to a stop yards away. From that distance Id watched its doors open, the metal hinges creaking in the warm late-summer air. A large woman with two children emerged first, followed by an elderly man who smoked a pipe and wore a navy blue captains cap, the sort of old salt often seen on Cape Cod in those days. Then thered been a moment of suspension, when no one emerged from the shadowy interior of the bus, so that Id expected it to pull away, swing left and head toward the neighboring town of Orleans, a trail of dust following behind it like an old feather boa.

But the bus had stayed in place, its engine rumbling softly as it idled by the road. I could not imagine why it remained so until I saw another figure rise from a seat near the back. It was a woman, and she moved forward slowly, smoothly, a dark silhouette. Near the door she paused, her arm raised slightly, her hand suspended in midair even as it reached for the metal rail that would have guided her down the stairs.