Rating: 
Summary: A great book!! One of the best!!
Review: I loved this novel! The story and the characters were outstanding and the pace was pretty good. The plot revolves around a mystery that happened in the 1920's (book takes place in the 90's) that is still having an affect on some people. In 1926 two teachers at Chatham were involved in a forbidden romance which lead to some very disturbing incidents in May of 1927.The writing was dark and depressing at times and the novel did slow down in the middle a bit. However, the characters were wonderful and I felt myself rooting for the various players at one point or another. When I can to the end of the book, I was left speechless and stunned. This indeed is one of the best book out there. I highly recommend this novel!!
Rating:
Summary: Highly recommended for all mystery fans
Review: I read quite a few mysteries. Sometimes I am able to predict the outcome, and sometimes the outcome is just not very memorable. This is not the case in this book. The ending is very powerful and stayed with me vividly long after I finished reading this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent wind-up and ending, but not a great journey
Review: I read the book, and enjoyed it very much, but I loved the whole ending better than the body of the book.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful!
Review: I read this book several months ago and with Mr. Cook's latest PLACES IN THE DARK set to come out in May '00, I've picked up a couple more. My review is that this is a wonderful story. I grew up partly in a small town in Southwestern Oklahoma and most if not all of the images and characters Mr. Cook created in CHATHAM SCHOOL AFFAIR is so familiar to me. The story itself is melancholy, wistful. With each page I turn, I know I'm drawing closer to a sad ending but I can't help hoping that it's going to come out differently. I just finished his book BREAKHEART HILL as well and his books are completely different from the usual cliched detective novels that glut the mystery racks. Every time I finish one of his books, each one makes me feel as if I don't treat my fellow human beings as well as they should be treated. Mr. Cook takes me to a place I'd like to call home in each of the books I've read so far. He's spoiled me and I wish more writers would write the same type tales he spins.
Rating:
Summary: Extremely hard to put down.
Review: I very much enjoyed this book. Thomas Cook has a talent for teasing you with clues as to what the outcome will be; you can't wait to find out what happened to cause the disasterous results. He also makes you feel you know the characters, only to find out they are extremely multi-faceted. I highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Pure Cook Thriller - Haunting and suspenseful
Review: If you liked Breakheart Hill you will love The Chatham School Affair. This novel is the reason readers love Cook's well crafted thrillers. These mysteries are written more like novels with well timed twists and turns to keep the reader on their feet. Cook never allows the reader to be lulled into a sense of comfort for too long and his formula works well. Chatham School Affair is the story of a young boy, Henry Griswald, the son of the head master of Chatham School. He is asked by his father to welcome the new art teacher and settle her into her new and desolate home on Black Pond. So far away from the town of Chatham, Elizabeth Channing must turn to her only neighbor for company, it is a shame that her neighbor is married. But that is only the beginning... What occurs next could only be a product of Cook's wild imagination and again, only young Henry knows the truth. What happened out on Black Pond that would not only shake the school but the whole town of Chatham to it's core? Pure suspense and thrills - Chatham School Affair is s great read and one that will certainly remain a favorite recommendation to all.
Rating:
Summary: A Haunting, Powerful Story
Review: In the summer of 1926, Miss Elizabeth Channing steps off the bus in Chatham, Massachusetts on Cape Cod, to teach art at the Chatham Boys School. She will be living in a small cottage outside of town on Black Pond, her only neighbor, a married, literature teacher, Leland Reed. So begins The Chatham School Affair, narrated by the headmaster's son, Henry Griswald. Henry takes the reader back to that year, in a spellbinding, moving story of the events that led, to what the townspeople will always call, the Chatham School affair. This is not just a suspense thriller or mystery novel, but a sensitive, compelling story of how the power of the spoken word, once said, can never be taken back or undone and can change, forever the course of many lives. With his eloquent writing and subtle plot twists, Mr. Cook keeps the reader off balance, always guessing and never quite sure, all the way to the climactic ending. His characters come alive on the page and his scenes are so riveting and vivid, they are sometimes painful to read. A stunning story of love, loss and betrayal. Thomas Cook deserved all the awards The Chatham School Affair won.
Rating:
Summary: A real classic in the making.
Review: It is no wonder that four years after publication you still find a lot of references to this book and even see it quite often still on special display in the bookstore. It is the combination of being a thriller ( with all the twists and surprises) and a real classical tragedy that makes this book so appealing. The love story of Miss Channing and Mr.Reed unfolds and ends like probably a lot of them have ended in real life in the periods just after the war and one sits back and wonders about the beliefs and moral values in the community which helped the tragedy to take it's pace. It is exceptional when a writer, particularly one writing thrillers which also have the objective to entertain, can make you question your own beliefs about the right and wrong in human behaviour.
Rating:
Summary: slow start, but strong finish
Review: It's unfortunate that the synopsis provided on the back cover is somewhat misleading. Despite what it seems like, this is not a detective story, a whodunit type deal. Half way through the book the readers will have figured what the "affair" is all about. But, this book is not about solving a crime and finding the culprit. The so-called "affair" is in fact a simple case of adultery. What important is that this "affair" is more a setup for the readers to examine the mindsets of different characters in the story. Who has done what is not we care about. Instead we are drawn into the mind and personality of the characters. Who is this person? What is she/he thinking? How is she/he feeling about everything and everyone around? And, how has this feeling changed throughout the Chatham School Affair? One of the key characters, who is also the narrator of the story, is Henry. Why, after so many years, has Henry settled back in Chatham, a town he so despised as a boy, a place he so desperately wished to run away from? Is it because of his guilt and shame? Is it because he has changed the way he feels about his father? His town? Or is it because he has changed the way he feels about life? These and many other questions linger on in my head long after I close the book. If the readers try to understand the Chatham School Affair from such an angle, she/he will realize that this book is indeed a very good novel, not about any mysterious death or murder, but, more satisfyingly, the human soul and heart.
Rating:
Summary: A bleak masterpiece of psychological horror
Review: Let me start off with a warning: even though this book is very good, and well deserves its Edgar, perhaps reading it will not be the best thing for you. For one thing, its narrative structure requires some attention from the reader. The action on which the narrator reflects takes place in the 1920's. The point of view shifts between the present and a moving index in the past, an index which inexorably creeps up on the disaster. Meanwhile we are given misleading hints and scraps of information about what will happen. Actually, the narrative is not so much like seeing one thing, then another. It is like watching a dithered image come up on your computer screen: first you get rough outlines, then the details are filled in, until finally all the pixels are filled in. But the last pixels are the important ones, in this case. Most intelligent readers can handle that kind of variation from normal style, but some can't, and if you can't you should read something else. But that's not the main danger. Once the details are all filled in - on the last page - and you get a good look at the picture, you will not be happier for it. It will be sort of like one of Dore's engravings for Dante's "Inferno": a very well done picture of something horrible. I am using the words "horror" and "horrible" in a very deliberate sense. I don't mean in the Stephen King sense of non-human ghouls and monsters. What I am associating with the word "horror" is a sense of inescapable disaster befalling people who don't deserve it, and for no reason that you will find at all compatible with the notion of a "fair universe". It's not enjoyable to look at, and that's why the craft of horror writing often involves sneaking up on the reader and sticking it in his/her face before he/she can get away. Well, after you have allowed yourself to care for the characters - and there are no villains in the piece - you will, at the end, find out who dies, and how, and who suffers, and how, and why. And it will be a very bleak picture - a picture of great artistic integrity, but without any pleasant highlights whatever. And there is a distinct possibility that you will say to yourself, "Why did I read this? Why did I look upon this picture, which will now depress me for the rest of the day or longer?" I'm really not kidding about this. However, on balance, I am glad I read this book. It is, in fact, a horror novel about ethics. The disaster which envelops the narrator (then an adolescent boy at his father's private school on Cape Cod), and the teachers he loves, and everyone and everything else he values, is ultimately one of conflicting imperatives. Conform to hidebound convention, or cast it off? Follow your heart, or lock it away? Do your duty, or abandon it? Help your loved ones, or remain aloof? Mercy, or accountability? St. Augustine, I think, made the point that sin is virtue perverted or overdone. Therefore, the mere fact that you are acting on an ethical imperative is no insurance that you won't have blood on your hands. But to know what virtue has been perverted into what catastrophic sin by whom, you have to wait for the last pixel.
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