This follow-up by the author of A Density of Souls leaves quite a bit to be desired. The novel seems more like a rushed contractrual obligation rather than a full fledged thriller. The story takes us to Atherton University where Kathryn, Randall and Jesse are in their freshman year. For each of them, college promises a bright future and a way to disconnect from a dark past. But as winter sets in, their secret histories threaten to disrupt the layers of deceit that protect their fragile new lives.
One dark night a professor's wife is drowned in an icy river, and rumors of murder threaten the safe haven of Atherton. Within days, Randall's illicit affair with the professor is about to be revealed in the local press. Then, an old mystery emerges from the shadows as people recall the discovery of a co-ed's corpse in a frozen creek twenty years before. Gradually, the three friends find themselves snared in a web of lies, a web spun long before their days of Atherton. Snowbound on the university campus, they are unwitting captives of a malevolent force that drives them inexorably toward the "snow garden" of the title—a place of nightmares that is all too real, and all too near.
The Snow Garden has a silly cult, closet cases, a bi hunk and plenty of interesting dialogue. What it doesn't have is an interesting story. Hopefully Christopher Rice will sit down patiently and write us a real novel for his next outing.
