A Kind of Wild Justice

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.