A Thousand Cuts
by Simon Lelic
Viking Adult, March 2010, $24.95
What can you ever know about the motives of a quiet and unassuming teacher who opens fire in a school assembly and kills three students and a fellow teacher before turning the gun on himself? Though everyone seems mystified by the violent event, DI Lucia May tries to walk, literally, in the shooter’s footsteps. She wants to understand what led up to it, even though her boss wants the case wrapped up and out of the headlines.
As she peels back the layers, Lucia learns that students tormented the teacher mercilessly, that he had a failed relationship with another colleague, that he was not the only person who suffered from unchecked bullying. As she investigates, the treatment she receives from her male colleagues is similarly abusive. The psychological tension escalates as she doggedly keeps digging.
The book has an unusual structure, opening with a witness statement in the voice of a schoolboy recounting his experience with an uncannily realistic voice. Chapters alternate a close third-person view from the detective’s perspective with the statements she takes from students, teachers, parents, and school officials. It’s artfully done—almost too artfully; at times it seems like the virtuoso performance of a well-trained actor who can do voices cleverly. Yet the growing sense of injustice and the muggy, stifling atmosphere of the book work well to increase the sense of being trapped, drawing the reader into the state of mind of someone bullied so relentlessly there’s only one way out.
Reviewed by Barbara Fister
More from Mystery Scene and this author
- A Thousand Cuts (March 2010), Simon Lelic, review by Betty Webb available in Mystery Scene Winter Issue #113
- Purchase A Thousand Cuts at Amazon.com
- Get the reading group guide at the publisher’s site
Transcend this!
Monday, January 4th, 2010As we start this new year, full of brightness, promise and lots of books, there is one phrase I would like to see banned from every review, every discussion, every thought about mysteries.
Transcends the genre.
I hate that phrase. It sets my teeth on edge. More importantly, it shows a total lack of knowledge about mysteries and a lack of respect for the wonderful authors who bring us these multi-layered stories.
Transcend this.
This phrase reared its head recently in a New York Times review. While the reviewer waxed poetically about the novel, it seems this reviewer couldn’t resist that last little dig. The novel’s characters “transcend their genre.”
Would someone please explain to me what that is a compliment?
Mysteries don’t have to transcend anything.
Laura Lippman
On their own, mysteries are multilayered novels with complex plots, complicated characters and intricate motives. Mysteries have become the social novel of the day – showing us who we are at this point in time and showcasing the ills, morals and achievements of society.
Shakespeare wrote mysteries. Doubt that? What is Hamlet? Dickens wrote mysteries. Doubt that? What is The Mystery of Edwin Drood? The greatest operas of the world are, at their core, mysteries. Doubt that? Have you seen the one about the clown who murders his wife?
I think being a mystery writer is high praise in itself because it involves so many different aspect of writing. It takes much skill and intelligence to keep readers guessing for more than 300 pages not just about who did it but why it was done. When so called literary writers try to write mysteries, the result is, frankly, often less than desirable.
A few years ago, Laura Lippman spoke at the Mystery Writers of America, Florida chapter, about how she was just fine with being a mystery writer and how that transcend term irks her. (Sorry, Laura, if I don’t remember all this correctly).
Last year, Lippman returned to South Florida to participate in the Broward County Literary Feast. Naturally, I moderated the panel. Lippman said something to me that meant the world – “Oline, you have never used the term transcend the genre.”
No, I haven’t. And hope I never do. If you ever see that phrase in one of my reviews, I did not put it there.
The best mystery fiction give us novels that show us who we are and how we deal with our lives. That would include authors such as Dennis Lehane, Michael Connelly, George Pelecanos, Lippman, Val McDermid, Robert Crais, Meg Abbott, Kelli Stanley, John Hart, David Ellis, Michael Koryta, James W. Hall and I have to stop before I mention too many, which of course means I will also leave out too many.
So elevate the genre, showcase the genre and let us see how rich and deep the genre is.
Just don’t transcend it.
Posted in Commentary, Reviews | 21 Comments »