A Thousand Cuts

In the wake of a London school shooting, Det. Insp. Lucia May finds herself unable to accept the simple version of what transpired in Lelic’s outstanding debut—that Samuel Szajkowski, a new history teacher, gunned down two students and a colleague in an assembly hall before turning the weapon on himself. While Szajkowski was the subject of cruel pranks from his first day on the job, pranks that escalated to serious physical injury, May resists her supervisor’s directives to write a straightforward final report, and looks into a possible link between the massacre and an off-campus beating of a student. Artfully offering a range of perspectives on the events leading up to the fatal day, Lelic manages to make the murderer sympathetic as he sensitively explores the varying degrees of responsibility for the tragedy borne by others whose response to bullying was inadequate. This deeply human and moving book heralds a bright new talent. (Mar.)