Day One

There’s a moment in this story of an English village school shooting when a mother tries to call for her son. “[T]he space left by her inhale was filled with elbows, shoulders, and no words came out,” a description that’s just one of the shivers readers will get from Dean’s unflinching look at horror. But the book’s not really about the shooting itself, though that awful event gets its share of pages. Nor is it about the shooter, though he too gets his due, in a section that readers should know includes a horribly accurate look at a verbally, emotionally, and physically abusive man. Rather, Dean puts her magnifying glass on what happens after, when those who question everything except conspiracy theories move in with their claims that the massacre never happened and the victims never existed. A split-second decision by someone from the small town is later blown up by the right wing and adds interesting shadows to the killer/victims dichotomy. Those who wanted Alex Jones ground to dust will be intrigued by this fuller look behind his kind of rabid cruelty, and fans of Dean’s Girl A and of psychological thrillers are also a great audience for this. A realistic and absorbing look at media gone wrong and the lives it scorches.