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Summary: Departure from Navarre's escapades
Review: Amid the mixed reviews for Cold Springs, this one-off thriller didn't disappoint. One reviewer's comments about discomfort is accurate... it was hard for me to identify with many of the characters, and, as with many works of fiction, I had to suspend my disbelief on many occasions. But Cold Springs was an entertaining read. Though I thoroughly enjoy the Navarre series, I hope to see more departures from Riordan, lest he, and we, get a bit tired of Tres.
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Summary: Something for everyone.
Review: Fabulous book. Action packed enough to satisfy thriller-readers, with enough psychological studies to satisfy people who like character-based books, with twists and turns galore to satisfy people who are trying to figure it all out. I changed my mind every couple of pages on the "who did it" -- even though I got one part of the "why done it" right. Not a laid-back meandering book, even though some of the language is very descriptive and poetic. Something for everyone.Beth
Rating: 
Summary: disappointing
Review: I have read this authors previous novels and enjoyed them very much. This book ,however, was a tedious lesson in morality. I finished it but only by gritting my teeth. The only thing that would have improved this book is editing, to the bone preferably.
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Summary: Don't stop reading. Don't relax.
Review: I really like Rick Riordan's Tres Navarre books. Tres is a great guy and a great character. Even in the deepest mysteries or most desperate straits, he always strikes me as someone who's basically in control, and a fun guy to hang out with. The characters in "Cold Springs" aren't like that. If the Navarre stories are fast-paced and entertaining, "Cold Springs" is edgy and uncomfortable. All of the characters are tense and troubled. All their lives are dark and desperate. And with one or two exceptions, none of them were ultimately particularly easy to be around. Even Chadwick, our hero, is battling too many demons ever to feel comfortable with. In fact, I never felt comfortable in this story at all, never able to relax, and never certain about what might be around the next corner. I loved it. "Cold Springs" has all the intricate plotting we've come to expect from Rick Riordan. Suspicion points at one character, and then another. Nobody seems trustworthy, not even our hero. But when you finally reach the resolution, most everything falls into place. As you read this, keep in mind the subtitle on the front cover: "A Novel of Secrets." Secrets are always being revealed -- right up to the very end. Riordan's plot is complex and winding, but his characterizations deserve praise too. As I read this, I was reminded of Tolstoy's famous opening line, "All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Here, every miserable, troubled person is miserable and troubled in his or her own way, and each of them, including the several teenagers, is true to life (or at least convincing to someone like me who has mercifully avoided that kind of misery in my own life). And unlike the Navarre books, this story is told in third-person, and from multiple viewpoints. Riordan thus not only had to create characters whose actions are believable, but whose thoughts and emotions are believable too. That's much harder to do, and my hat's off to him because I think he pulled it off. Rick Riordan has done a great job. He's one of the few authors, and certainly the only novelist, for whose next work I'm always impatient. Though "Cold Springs" paid off the wait, it also whet my appetite for whatever's coming next. But first, I need to sit back and let the tension ease out a little bit. This was a nerve-wracking ride, and I think I need a rest.
Rating:
Summary: Wow!
Review: I'm a big fan of the Riordan's mystery series, and don't usually like stand-alone thrillers. This book is different. It's one of the best reads I've picked up in a long time. I don't buy many books (usually preferring library checkouts), but had to buy this one, and surprisingly it was completely worth it. I couldn't put it down towards the end. The characters are believable and sympathetic; the story compelling. And best of all, it kept me guessing throughout with some questions answered all along the way. Highly recommended!
Rating:
Summary: Wow!
Review: I'm a big fan of the Riordan's mystery series, and don't usually like stand-alone thrillers. This book is different. It's one of the best reads I've picked up in a long time. I don't buy many books (usually preferring library checkouts), but had to buy this one, and surprisingly it was completely worth it. I couldn't put it down towards the end. The characters are believable and sympathetic; the story compelling. And best of all, it kept me guessing throughout with some questions answered all along the way. Highly recommended!
Rating:
Summary: Thriller with phychological and multiple plot twists
Review: My awareness of the intricacy of Rick Riordan's plotting began when I realized the main character was known only by his last name. This interesting linguistic twist indicates a distancing from intimacy and immediate knowledge about Chadwick's personality and history. I should know. I semi-dated a man who constantly referred to himself by his last name. The story is riveting and often doubles back to re-involve the original characters and reveal previously unmentioned details. I pre-ordered this book and will always pre-order this writer's novels.
Rating:
Summary: Thriller with phychological and multiple plot twists
Review: My awareness of the intricacy of Rick Riordan's plotting began when I realized the main character was known only by his last name. This interesting linguistic twist indicates a distancing from intimacy and immediate knowledge about Chadwick's personality and history. I should know. I semi-dated a man who constantly referred to himself by his last name. The story is riveting and often doubles back to re-involve the original characters and reveal previously unmentioned details. I pre-ordered this book and will always pre-order this writer's novels.
Rating:
Summary: a pleasure and a pain to read, all at once.
Review: Riordan makes his characters so real, reading this book might actually make you feel sick. I never knew who was the hero or who was the villian because all of the characters deserve empathy as well as disrespect. You will feel like you know these people and have been to their homes. I LOVED this book.
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Summary: Another hit from a rising star
Review: The typical death toll in a contemporary thriller would populate a small city. Today's crime-fiction writers gleefully dispatch more souls than Forest Lawn, and rarely is anyone haunted by the carnage or the shadows. The ghosts are thick in Rick Riordan's new thriller, "Cold Springs," but not because a lot of people die in a first few blood-splashed pages. Quite the contrary. These ghosts -- like Riordan's cast of characters -- once had three-dimensional form and feelings, and they haunt the heart more than the noir-ish corners of rain-slicked cliché. "Cold Springs" is Riordan's first stand-alone thriller, a departure from his Edgar- and Shamus-winning series featuring wise-cracking San Antonio private-eye Tres Navarre. While the Texas middle-school teacher has now returned to the character who first put him on the radar, "Cold Springs" shows he has the chops for more stylish prose in the headlong rush of a multi-level, rapidly twisting plot. Riordan's voice is smooth, accented with a South Texas drawl and punctuated by evocative imagery -- hills that look like "scar tissue, swollen and raw and pink" or a voice that "stung like sleet." Such metaphor from the mouth of the irreverent Tres Navarre would elicit a Chandler-esque groan -- and often does -- but transplanted to a deeper story with more complex relationships and landscapes, it's not out of place. It's a matter of degree. "Cold Springs" doesn't portend a new trend toward literary thrillers, but it flirts with slightly more "character arc" -- the way a protagonist changes over the course of a story -- than most of today's purely plot-driven stuff. It ain't even so high up the tree that it will put off page-turning mystery fans who measure good "literature" by high body counts and bizarre ways to die. For them, Riordan supplies a steady stream of corpses and unusual wounds. But Riordan is a rising star in crime fiction and, with luck, will help the genre usher back strong plots with complex characters.
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