From: The New York Times

January 27, 2008

Shades of the Muckrakers

Reviews by MARILYN STASIO

... The perverse tones of Madeline Dare rake their fingernails across the mental blackboard in THE CRAZY SCHOOL (Grand Central, $23.99). And how nice it is to hear that rebel voice again. After making her nervy debut in “A Field of Darkness,” Cornelia Read’s renegade debutante took to the hills of New England, and here she is in 1989 in the Berkshires, teaching at the Santangelo Academy, a “therapeutic boarding school” for the troubled progeny of the filthy rich. In addition to appealing to “all manner of seekers and lost boys, wild girls and pagan sprites,” and those misguided souls who would teach them more practical social skills, the region also attracts a murderer who kills two students and makes the deaths look like a double suicide. Only the iconoclastic Madeline, who really cares about her vulnerable charges, is skeptical enough to see through the sham. While hardly taxing, the whodunit plot is funny and twisted, and it gives Madeline plenty of opportunities to air her caustic views on the evolutionary decline of her social class.

A Frield Of Darkness

Book List's Top Ten Mysteries 06'

Every page is a pleasure in this mystery debut featuring barb-wielding ex-debutante Madeline Dare. A newspaper reporter trapped among the white trash of Syracuse, New York, she becomes enmeshed in the 20-year-old unsolved murder of two young hippies. Read’s plot crackles and pops, but her characters steal the show. Among them: a lustful livestock auctioneer and a batch of in-laws who make the cast of Deliverance seem urbane. This is sure to be loved by fans of comic mysteries, but don’t be surprised if Tom Wolfe readers are equally smitten by Read’s venomously witty portrait of a fallen WASP.

Publishers Weekly

Read's impressive debut stars the unusual Madeline Dare, a jumble of contradictions who comes from an old-money Long Island family but is married to Dean, a railroad worker, in Syracuse, N.Y., which our heroine likens in a moment of exasperation to "some mental dust bowl." Dean's job requires frequent travel, while Madeline writes fluff features for the local newspaper. Nothing in her background prepares her for trying to solve the bizarre 20-year-old murder of two young women, a crime that her cousin, Lapthorne Townsend, might have been involved in. Read writes with verve and passion as Madeline sets out to clear her cousin's name, an effort that develops into a much larger, life-changing struggle. Some readers may find Madeline's volatile character less than credible, but the fine supporting cast—notably husband Dean and flaky, flamboyant friend Ellis—consistently delights. The author's sharp social commentary on everything from the idle rich to the environment adds to the pleasure. 5-city author tour. (May)

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REVIEWS:

The Crazy School

From: SF Chronicle

Febuary 10th , 2008

By Eddie Muller

...

Cornelia Read brought a fresh voice to "Field of Darkness" (2006), a book that was nominated for practically every best-first-novel prize. It should come as no surprise that the voice is Read's own, expertly transferred to the page. Consider: Read/(protagonist) Madeline Dare - the last names are even anagrams.

In her debut, Read wove a historical mystery plot through a thinly veiled memoir of her upbringing as an East Coast debutante-turned-cub reporter. While some of the plot devices may have emitted the occasional creak, Read's considerable wit and elan with first-person narration made "Field of Darkness" an undeniable page-turner.

Read repeats the recipe in her second book, The Crazy School (Grand Central; $23.99; 336 pages), which finds Dare accepting a teaching job at a progressive school for troubled youth in the Berkshires - much as Read did. The novel's success depends on the reader's being able to accept the way the conventions of the mystery genre steer the story from documentary realism to boiling melodrama - this is "Up the Down Staircase" as Grand Guignol.

This was not a problem for me, mainly because Read is developing into one of those original and confident voices worth reading wherever the plot may go. I suspect that in the future, Read's books will continue to track her own life story - albeit with many more dead bodies strewn around.

Just keep talking/writing, Ms. Dare/Read, and we'll all keep listening/reading.