Thomas H. Cook: Author Biography
Edgar-Winning Author of Literary Mysteries and True Crime
Oct 14, 2008
Thomas H. Cook’s novels explore the theme of evil in all of its aspects, especially the kind that dwells in the soul of a person forced with an unusual dilemma in his life.
Most of Thomas H. Cook’s body of work presents a psychological story with a literary-quality theme. In places, his prose reads like poetry. His stories, many told in retrospect, often end with some stark and insightful revelation about human nature.
Author Background Information
Thomas H. Cook was born in 1947 in the Southern town of Fort Payne, Alabama. He received a B.A. at Georgia State College, and graduate degrees from Hunter College and Columbia University. After holding down several jobs as teacher and book reviewer, he began writing full-time. Many of his novels have been nominated for the Edgar and other prestigious awards.
Cook is the author of twenty-two novels, including the Edgar-winning The Chatham School Affair. He is married with one daughter, and he and his family divide their time between New York City and Cape Cod.
Early Work and Private Eye Novels
Cook’s earlier works include a private eye trilogy in which jaded cop Frank Clemons is the hero. The three books, Sacrificial Grounds, Flesh and Blood, and Night Secrets have a distinctly noir quality.
Critics believe the best of Cook’s early work is The City when it Rains, a dark novel in which night photographer David Corman photographs a woman who throws a doll through the window of her apartment, then plummets to her death. The truth of her death comes as a startling revelation which has personal meaning for the hero.
Famous Mysteries
Award Winning Novel--The Chatham School Affair
The Chatham School Affair, which won the Edgar in 1997, is believed by many to be Cook’s best work. It was definitely his breakthrough novel. The book is about a mysterious young woman who appears in the small village of Chatham to rent a cottage on the edge of Black Pond. Decades later, one man holds a terrible secret about an event, a drowning, that happened years ago and destroyed many lives, including his own.
Breakheart Hill
Other Thomas H. Cook fans believe Breakheart Hill to be his best work. This novel takes place in Choctaw, Alabama in the year 1962. As in The Chatham School Affair,the hero is haunted by an event that occurred decades ago. The story deals with an old, unsolved crime. A teenage girl, Kelli writes an essay about the history behind Breakheart Hill, a bloody slavery issue. An outspoken advocate of civil rights, she was beaten and left to die on that same hill. A violent troublemaker was convicted, but the truth of what really happened becomes a shocking revelation decades later.
Some of Cook’s other mysteries include Evidence of Blood, Mortal Memory, Instruments of Night, Places in the Dark, the Interrogation, Into the Web, Red Leaves, The Cloud of Unknowing, and Master of the Delta.
True Crime
Cook has also written two true crime novels, Early Graves (1992) and Blood Echoes (1993) Early Graves follows the true account of the youngest woman ever sentenced to Death Row. Blood Echoes (1993) follows the 1973 slaying of six members of the Alday family and the devastation of the Alday family, who lost not only their family and farm, but their sense of faith in the justice system.
In addition to mystery and True Crime, Thomas H. Cook is the author of several literary works, including the novels The Orchids and Elena.
Click here to read a review of Master of the Delta
Click this link to read a review of The Cloud of Unknowing
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