SCHOOL DAYS (2005)
By Robert B. Parker
Putnam, 295 pages
★★★★
Here we go again. I did a capsule review of School Days by the late Robert Parker a while ago. It’s a 2005 book about two kids who shot up their school. I decided to re-read it this week based on the news that 16-year-old Colt Gray was given life in prison with no possibility of parole for killing two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Georgia.
I’m not about to excuse such behavior or argue for leniency. Gray did it, admitted it, and seems to bear little remorse for his deed. Maybe the kid’s a punk, maybe he’s a neo-Nazi, maybe he’s mentally ill. I’ve no idea, but Parker’s novel made me think. In the fictional Boston ‘burb of Dowling, Massachusetts, Wendell Grant and Jared Clark took high-powered rifles into their private school and opened fire. They left seven kids dead and numerous others wounded. The did it and, like Gray, were caught and admitted the deed. Case closed, lock the doors, and throw away the key. It was an inexcusable massacre by two monsters. Close the books, heal the community, and try to forget about it.
Not so fast. Lily Ellsworth shows up in Spenser’s office and wants him to investigate the incident. She is willing to pay Spenser handsomely to investigate Jared’s involvement in the crime and she can afford however much his fee might be. She is Jared’s grandmother, a pillar of Dowling society, and so upright that she fails to find any humor in any of Spenser’s wisecracks. Spenser’s first instinct is to reject her offer. He tells her that the case against Jared is airtight, but she wants him to make certain and is willing to pay him even if he ultimately concludes Jared is guilty.
It would be disappointing if Spenser had pulled a rabbit out of his hat and exonerated Jared. He knows the kid is guilty and is going to jail for a long, long stay. Jared knows it too and tells Spenser to leave him the f*** alone. But Spenser wants to know why it happened. That’s something we seldom ask and maybe that’s why school shootings have become as commonplace as crabgrass and as boring reading a privacy policy update. Fans of Parker’s Spenser series know that Spenser is bonded with psychologist Sarah Silverman, but Parker wisely sends her off to a conference, leaving Spenser to dog sit Pearl and spend a lot of time investigating.
This also made me think. The stock answer, at least from conservatives, is that the shooters were either terrorists, human garbage, or mentally ill. Does anyone stop to ask what happened to a 16-year-old that transformed a child into a teenage devil? How much external harm was done and, more importantly, who was responsible for it? On a tangible level, how does a loner like Jared acquire high-powered guns and learn to shoot them? His parents never had guns, nor did they give Jared several thousand dollars to buy them. That sort of dosh certainly didn’t come from Wendell Grant, even if (as Spenser suspects) he was the mastermind of the attack. Why were Jared and Wendell together in the first place? Wendell was an aggressive football player, came from a non-nurturing family, and was known to be a jerk, whereas Jared was a meek loner. He wasn’t unpopular among other students; he was more like a blank that no one saw. Spenser suspects that something is missing, his affect perhaps. Spenser will call in several favors and dodge dangers to find answers.
Spenser’s questions begin to bug President Garner and school psychologist Beth Ann Blair. Pretty good ones, yes? If you’ve never read Parker, this book comes with the warning that Spenser novels are shot through with testosterone, gunplay, the male gaze, and female libido. I will say, though, that School Days reminded me a lot of a quite different scandal. See if you can name it.
Rob Weir
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