Author: Julian F. Thompson
Year of publication: 1983, Magnet edition 1984
Back cover blurb: 'Coldbrook Country School is a highly exclusive boarding school. To be there you have to have rich parents. And it's a very nice place. It treats you like an adult and expects you to behave like one. With its beautiful mountain setting and its caring staff, it should be just the place to straighten out a difficult kid.
For the five sixteen-year-old misfits in Group 6, Coldbrook was the last resort. But it took them some time to realise that Coldbrook's solution to their problem was going to be very final indeed. And when they found out who was paying - it seemed impossible. But it was all too terrifyingly true.'
Quick flick reveals: Not really a lost book, as it made a considerable impact on its YA audience in the US at the time and has been held in affection by Generation Ws ever since, I'm including it here because it didn't quite so much of an impression in the UK. And besides, I paid my 20p, as you can see.
Essentially I'm just in love with the concept of SPOILER ALERT a school for problem children trying to kill the problem kids. It seems like a way-ahead-of-its-time cross between Battle Royale and what I imagine The Hunger Games to be about, which probably has nothing to do with what The Hunger Games is actually about. Bet it's amazing.
Random paragraph: '"My strategy," he said to Mrs. Ripple, "is simply to eliminate, eliminate, eliminate. Every time I know a place they're not, I'm that much closer to the place they are."'
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