Find what you were looking for, Inspector?’
Every day the same question. A different uniform but the same question. They thought Lucia enjoyed being here. They thought that was why she kept coming back. But they were asking the wrong thing. She had found what she was looking for – she had found what she had been sent to discover – but she had found out more besides. The question was what to do about it. The question was whether to do anything at all.
In the depths of a sweltering summer, teacher Samuel Szajkowski walks into his school assembly and opens fire. He kills three pupils and a colleague before turning the gun on himself.
Lucia May, the young policewoman who is assigned the case, is expected to wrap up things quickly and without fuss. The incident is a tragedy that could not have been predicted and Szajkowski, it seems clear, was a psychopath beyond help. Soon, however, Lucia becomes preoccupied with the question no one else seems to want to ask: what drove a mild-mannered, diffident school teacher to commit such a despicable crime?
Piecing together the testimonies of the teachers and children at the school, Lucia discovers an uglier, more complex picture of the months leading up to the shooting. She realises too that she has more in common with Szajkowski than she could have imagined. As the pressure to bury the case builds, she becomes determined to tell the truth about what happened, whatever the consequences . . .
The Author
Simon Lelic has worked as a journalist and currently runs his own business. He was born in Brighton in 1976 and recently returned with his family to live there. ‘Rupture’ is his first novel.
And some reviews….
‘Its been some time since I picked up a first novel and literally couldn’t put it down. This tale of bullying, isolation, turning a blind eye and pursuing the truth is in essence a police procedural, told in the third person, but all the testimonies that build up the case are monologues, slowly piecing the whole picture together. Its about a school shooting and its brilliant.’ –Bookseller
‘absorbing, convincing and truly frightening… Lelic manages to evoke in crisp, accessible prose what it’s like to work in a modern school where bullying is rife. Perhaps most terrifying of all is the author’s gift for characterisation… The narrative is gripping… Lelic’s novel fuses the police procedural and school genres, twisting many familiar situations and characters into the stuff of chillingly realistic nightmares.’ –The Times
‘A tour de force of storytelling from Picador.’ –Granta
‘There’s a buzz in the publishing world about Simon Lelic’s debut novel, Rupture… [Lelic] is set for literary stardom.’ —The Times Magazine
‘Set during a stultifying London heatwave, this is a disturbingly realistic, taut piece of writing.’ –Guardian
“Lelic has an exceptional talent for voice. This talent means the reader is yanked into the narrative, and teased into persisting… Lelic can write like a poet… The pace is as ferocious as the subject, and some characters are expertly grotesque. Lelic’s novel may be his first; but you wouldn’t know it, it is so controlled, yet confidently reckless.’ –Independent
‘Lelic’s first novel is impressive in its scope and structural daring. A third-person narrative inhabiting Lucia’s mind alternates with first-person eyewitness accounts, and Lelic superbly captures the wildly different vocabularies and rhythms of speech of parents, teachers and pupils. This is a superior detective novel, proof that crime fiction can break free of the bounds of the genre into something much more complex.’ –Daily Telegraph
‘Subverting the more usual cliché’s surrounding tales of schoolroom massacre, debut novelist skilfully interweaves witness accounts with events unfolding in Lucia’s personal and professional life. This dynamic and youthful read captures the dog-days of the summer term in a drab inner-city school.’ –Independent
‘This impressively structured debut unfolds like an origami model to reveal its urgent central question… Lelic handles his harsh subject matter with great sensitivity, concluding on the most fragile note of hope.’ –Guardian
‘Lelic plays intriguingly with structure and builds his story into a disturbing depiction of oppression and cruelty.’ –Metro
The Verdict
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