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
