Cold springs by Rick Riordan

"Cold springs" by Rick Riordan - Ambling along!

This book is published by Bantam in 2004 and has 416 pages. 

Catherine, daughter of Chadwick, a school teacher, & Norma dies of drug overdose. Mallory, 5 year old daughter of John and Anne Zedman, was with her at that time. Time leap. Both marriages fall apart. Mallory starts using drugs and befriends Race Montrose, younger brother of Samuel who supplied drugs to Catherine years ago. Anne decides to enroll Mallory to Cold Springs. A dead man comes to life. 

Who killed Thalia? Who is blackmailing John?  Why did the marriages fail? What happened to the millions? What is Cold Springs? Who is behind all this?

The story has interesting characters. Chadwick, 6'8" gentle giant. Norma, his beautiful wife. Anne, childhood friend of Chadwick and Principal of school. John, her businessman husband. Perez, bodyguard and man Friday of John. Mallory, a drug addict frightened teenager. Race, a brilliant black boy whose family has a criminal history. Samuel, his elder brother. Hunter, head of Cold Springs and a man driven by his ambition of reforming kids. 

Concept of Cold Springs is interesting. A school that takes in spoilt, messed up, drug addict rich kids and breaks their ego, teaches them survival skills, discipline, accepting orders and reforms them, makes them fit to go back to the society. 

Rick's writing style is completely different as compared to humorous style of his more famous books based on various mythologies. The narration here is dark and atmosphere is mostly gloomy. There are no real happy moments or light moments. It's a slow burn.

That is the draw back of the story. Slow burn should not slow down. The story slows down considerably on multiple occasions. I was reading this book for a very long time.  Relationship between Chadwick and Anne is strange. 

Identity of the perpetrator is concealed very well. All my attempts with imagination failed to identify, until author zeroed on the real one. 

End of the book is stretched to the limit of reader's patience. It goes on and on. Readers start thinking if it's going to end at all. Title has nothing to do with the story. 

Why did I read this book? Author

What I didn't like? Pace of story. 

What did I like? Successful concealment of identity. 

Not a must read.