" The Chatham School Affair is a psychological suspense novel with the narrator looking back at events that took place fifty or so years previously, when he was a teenager. It is set on Cape Cod. If I had not been reading it as part of my Edgar Best Novels Project, I probably would not have finished it. Not that it was not well written, for it was. But since the story is told in the first person, it is the narrator who is the most fully realized character, and I found him self-centered and impossible to like. The story is certainly unusual and there is quite a bit of philosophizing by several of the characters. Some of their philosophies are better than others. There are many people who like this sort of thing, and to them I can recommend this book. I, however, did not find it edifying and can safely skip Mr. Cook's other books (the edition I read had an opening chapter from a subsequent book and I could tell I wouldn't like that either.) "
— Nikki, 2/18/2014