A Kind of Wild Justice
by
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I’m bored, thought James, gazing out of the window at the swaying, rain-laden trees, never imagining that a boy like him could one day be plotting vengeance against three men he did not know and who had done him no harm.
The summer holidays were nearly over, he was an only child and, having recently moved house, he knew nobody in the neighbourhood. The persistent drizzle put him out of sorts and rendered the garden out of bounds. Inside, it was no better: his computer kept crashing and the washing machine was clattering its corybantic dance; his mother was hoovering the hall in her checked apron; and his stepfather, wearing black, back-trodden-down carpet slippers and a sloppy green cardigan with leather buttons, lay reclined on the sofa nodding off to cricket highlights. As he watched the rivulets of rain coursing down the windowpane, humming and drumming his fingers on the sill, James withdrew into a sullen reverie.
‘I’m bored!’ he moaned as his mother breezed into the room. Before she could launch into her ‘When I was your age I had never heard of such a thing’ speech – a phrase she recalled from a novel she was currently reading – the doorbell rang, causing the low-slung, highly-strung toy poodle to spring to its feet with a manic yap. Yep! Many a time would James happily wring that mutt’s scraggy little neck.
He opened the front door and came face to face with a bedraggled, saggy-jowled spectacle – the cross-eyed and cross looking postman, heels steeped in a puddle of water spiculed with the tepid rain.
‘I need a signature.’
Keeping phatic communion to a minimum, lest she let in a blast of cool air, James’s mother passed comment on the blustery weather, signed, and closed the door in one swift movement. She sifted through the letters, then turned to James.
‘Who’s the lucky one, eh? We pick up the bills whilst you get a parcel. It doesn’t seem fair somehow.’
‘Who said life was fair?’ said James, repeating one of his mother’s favourite platitudes as he eagerly ripped open the package.
‘What is it, love?’
‘Huh. Just a novel by someone I’ve never heard of.’
Encouraged to treasure books from an early age, James enjoyed reading; but he could not disguise his disappointment: the rare thrill of receiving a parcel had yielded nothing more than an unprepossessing looking novel by an unknown author from an anonymous source. He held up the book for her to see the cover.
‘A Kind Of Wild Justice. That’s a coincidence,’ she said. ‘I’ve just read a very positive review. It’s excellent, by all accounts, as long as you agree to a willing suspension of disbelief.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Apparently one or two of the teenagers in it have a tendency to write and think like intelligent adults. Still, in my book that’s far better than trying to reproduce the incoherent drivel most kids come out with nowadays.’
‘Some of us are quite articulate, you know,’ countered James, pouring himself a glass of milk.
Once upstairs, he stretched out on his bed and skimmed through the blurb: ...a work of fiction about the long-term consequences of probably the single biggest issue facing most young people today. The novel also incorporates a number of curious and esoteric words, the meaning of which is always explained somewhere along the line, and it is hoped this will stimulate an interest in the incredible diversity of the English lexicon.
How bizarre getting a book through the post! Who had sent it, and why? Various fanciful ideas flittered across his brain, but little did he suspect how profoundly he would be affected by a narrative undoubtedly built around the implausibly sophisticated thought processes and improbable literary prowess of its teenage protagonists.
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About the Book
Bullying: hurting, persecuting or intimidating weaker people. Easy to define, difficult to stamp out. A Kind of Wild Justice is a work of fiction about the long-term consequences of probably the single biggest issue facing most young people today. This novel also incorporates a number of curious and esoteric words, the meaning of which is always explained somewhere in the book, and it is hoped that this will stimulate an interest in the incredible diversity of the English lexicon.
The year 2000: in the loft of his new house, a boy named Jim stumbles across a hidden notebook. It is a diary from 1970 in which a thirteen-year-old victim of bullying writes comprehensively about the experiences at his new secondary school that make his life a misery and drive him to suicide.
The pity Jim feels for the victim and his mother is eclipsed only by his anger towards the three main bullies and a passive observer who could have intervened. Realising that he alone knows what really happened all those years ago, he feels a strong urge to track down the culprits and punish them.
A chance encounter not only enables Jim to ascertain what the dead boy's mother feels about her son's death but also provides the first link to a past that is closer to home than he could ever have anticipated. Jim starts his campaign but things soon begin to spiral out of control, and he finds himself questioning his own motives. The more he pieces together the past, the harder it becomes to separate right from wrong, fact from fiction; the more he discovers about himself, the less clear he is about what sort of person he is or would like to be.
About the Author
He was born near London but grew up in the north of England. He studied English and French at university and then took a further degree in modern French literature. After his MA he worked in the south of France and then returned to England to train as a teacher. He has taught many subjects, including English, French, German, Spanish and PE, in a variety of schools, both in England and abroad. This wide experience has given him an insight into young people from all sorts of backgrounds and enabled him to develop clear ideas about many key issues relating to education.
He has learnt various languages, especially Portuguese, Italian and Russian. Other qualifications include the equivalent of a degree in Spanish and the Diploma in Translation of the Institute of Linguists. He is fascinated by the unique way people express themselves, both orally and in writing, and speaking several languages enables him to experience the world through different filters, and see things from other perspectives. His other main interests are sport, especially football and tennis, music, literature and art.
At present he is working as a teacher as well as a translator and writer. He has helped to produce materials for revision guides, had various articles published in the Times Educational Supplement, and produced academic editions of Spanish and French literary texts. He has written poetry, plays and short stories for his own pleasure but has now decided to concentrate on writing fiction with the aim of being published.