Apparently, this book is the second in a series featuring “ex-debutante Madeline Dare.” References to the first book in the series abound in this the second, but they’re unexplained. I didn’t care enough to find out where and why Madeline killed a man in self-defense, but I did glean that she did —and that she’s happy to have escaped something in Syracuse.

However, it seems to be a case of “out of the frying pan,” because if Syracuse was bad, a “crazy school” in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts turns out to be much worse. Madeline has a job at this school and residential treatment center for mentally disturbed adolescents. Unfortunately, the administration is crazier than the the inmates. And why Madeline, who’s supposed to be in full possession of her faculties despite being clinically depressed, doesn’t resign within two days of her arrival at Santangelo Academy . . . Maybe it has something to do with the mess she left behind in Syracuse in the first book.

That’s not the only motivational issue in the story, but it’s a minor example. Madeline also returns to her job a few days after a double murder at the school, a murder that the police suspect Madeline of committing. And, like a lunkhead and against her lawyer’s orders, she goes over to have tea and conversation with the guy she suspects is the murderer.

I’m not buying any of that kind of idiocy, and if you are, I’ve got a manuscript tucked away in my bottom desk drawer about a girl who spends the night in a haunted house and . . .