Search - The Crazy School

Excellent book! It reads quick and is hard to put down.

First Line: Halfway to Christmas, Forchetti stated the obvious: "You can't teach for shit."

This second outing of Madeline Dare finds her escaping the rust belt of Syracuse, New York, for the Berkshire Mountains in Massachusetts. Her husband's job offer fell through, and Madeline is now teaching at the Santangelo Academy, a boarding school for disturbed teenagers.

From day one, Madeline has felt uneasy about Dr. Santangelo, but whenever she questions some of his rather bizarre methods, she finds her fellow teachers more willing to turn on each other than protect themselves or their students. A tragic event has Madeline joining forces with a small band of the school's most rebellious students in an effort to save them all.

I loved Madeline's irreverent voice in A Field of Darkness, and nothing has changed in this second book. Madeline is equally adept at jokes or description, and I particularly liked this one of her "sick-unto-death" husband:

"Dean drew the blanket closer around his head and pressed his lips together, looking for all the world like an old woman disappointed by the sight of Ellis Island after a month in steerage."


After reading about Dr. Santangelo and several of the other teachers and mentally joining in with Madeline and her very small band of like-minded teachers, I had to know what in the world was going on at that school-- and how it could even be open. Once again Madeline had me well and truly hooked by her dilemma. When tragedy strikes (as she feared it would), the school has such a reputation that she knows she's going to have to conduct her own investigation if justice is going to be served:

"If the police think they did," I said, "they're not going to look at anything else. Because then it's just a couple of crazy kids up at that crazy school. That's not what happened. They have to know."


Uncovering the truth behind Dr. Santangelo and his academy, seeing Madeline interacting with her husband and friends, and watching her insist on doing what was best for the students all made for a very satisfying trip back to the early 1990s. Madeline is the type of character that has captured my imagination with her wit and perseverance, and I look forward to reading more about her.

I liked this book, it was a good quick read. I liked the main character, she was flawed and realistic. It won't set the literary world on fire, but a good engaging read that was easy to get into. I am looking forward to reading this author's first book now.

Not at all what I expected and not worth the time--characters you just can't get into, the story is just 'blah', just about teachers at a school for the mentally impaired and it was just so boring by half way that I just gave it up!

Not as good as Read's first book. Everything felt much more hurried in this one, and the characters were less compelling. It was a pretty fast read though, and still somewhat entertaining.