Bully: Does Anyone Deserve to Die?

This book was so drawn out. By the end I was pulling my hair out because I felt I had read all the details 100 times already. It had the best ingredients to be a good book but it just missed the mark. Oh and the chapters were soooooo long.

. . . Terry Smith!

After having watched the movie, and given it a five star rating, I picked the book up off my shelf, blew the dust off of it, and read it. It did not disappoint. Bully is the true tale of a group of middle class kids who live in Hollywood Florida. They decide that one of their peers, Bobby Kent, has pushed them around long enough. Bobby Kent and Marty Puccio were best friends since grade school, even though Bobby beat Marty up quite frequently. One day, while working at the deli in the Publix market, the boys meet Lisa Connelly and Ali Willis. Lisa can hardly believe it when the boys ask them to meet up at North Beach with them for some surfing. As Lisa stares at Marty, she sees the hunks that adorn her adolescent room's walls, pictures of gorgeous and desirable men. Lisa is homely and plump, and until now has only dreamed of having a boyfriend like Marty. For Ali, a very pretty, messed up, and spoiled girl, the meeting was just a quick fling with Bobby Kent. She didn't like him very well. Lisa continues to date Marty, though both Marty and Bobby physically and verbally abuse her, calling her Fatty and Shamu. When Lisa discovers she is pregnant, she gets her cousin Derek Dzvirko to drive her to Marty's house. Marty slaps Lisa around and mild mannered Derek intervenes, taking Lisa away. Lisa becomes convinced that Marty would treat her differently if Bobby were out of the picture. And so begins the plotting, Lisa first convincing Marty, then bringing in Ali and her friends, Donny and Heather. After one foiled attempt at Bobby, the kids decide they need someone to help, so they enlist a friend of a friend who told them he was a Mafia hitman. Derek Kaufman still lived with his parents on the fringes of Weston, and though he had trouble with the law, was not a hitman or even in a street gang. Nonetheless, he convinces the kids that he's the real deal, and they take him in with them on their plan to kill Bobby Kent. Jim Schutze does an excellent job of really bringing out the kid's personalities and quirks of character. The story reads like fiction, and I found myself having to remember that all of this was real, that these were events that really took place. Of course, as a caution, I am going to tell you that included in the pictures is a very grisly photo of the murder scene with the body still present. That brings the story back into focus pretty darn quick. It's quite scary to realize that these were not gang kids or ghetto kids, they were mall-rats and surfers and pretty little girls. Some had been in minor scrapes with the law, most of them used drugs, and one had been involved in a teenage prostitution ring, but there were still kids you wouldn't expect to murder someone. Even scarier is the way these kids convinced themselves that they did nothing wrong, not to mention the parent's complete lack of acknowledgement that their own little child could have been involved in something so horrid. I highly recommend both the b

Schutze does a spectacular job of painting the portrait of each character in this thrilling story. Brief review.... Broward Co. FL, 1993... Bobby Kent is a 20 year old, steroid using massachist. A person with no regard for human feelings. He abuses his best friend Marty Puccio to the point where Marty almost becomes Bobby. Marty soon takes on Bobby's abusive ways and takes out his anger and frustration on his deranged girlfriend Lisa. Lisa recognizes the horror Bobby has inflicted on Marty and decides she wants him dead. Masterminding the entire plot, Lisa gathers a group of Marty and 5 other individuals to kill Bobby Kent. After the murder is carried out, all the teens turn on each other and desperately attempt to save themselves as they find themselves on their way to a life in prison. The movie can be a bit decieving as you find yourself feeling sorry for Marty and to some extent the others involved. Schutze makes clear in his writing that Puccio is not a sitting duck and is just as deviant and violent as his counterpart Bobby. The ignorance of the parents involved in this story is incomprehensible. The fact that this is a true story makes it truly the most disturbing tale I have ever encountered.

Rarely do you read a book that captures the sheer selfishness & pointlessness of the modern mallrat teen. Shultz has successfully painted a picture of teens with no place to go, no ambition & no purpose for living. They get up in the morning only to go trawling for more drugs & banal sex, whilst maintaining a stanglehold on their parents' over-indulgent wallets. Thus, it is only natural when people who have had everything handed to them, & have never had to strive to achieve any ambition, start to look inwardly for the source of the void within their souls. Finding nothing inside their hearts but a great gaping hole, like kills like as they strike out at a reflection of themselves. However, the teens are tormented by continuing feelings of worthless & invalidity. The reason for the uselessness of their collective existences couldn't be themselves...could it?Not a single teen in this book has anything remotely admirable about them: Marty, a whingeing, steroid-fuelled follower who can't do anything without his best friend holding his hand. Lisa, whose mother has indulged her, pampered her growing sense of victimhood & quietly condoned her childish tantrums. Ali, whose family figured that throwing credit cards & a car at her were good substitutes for active parenting - even when they learned of her drug habit, they continued to do nothing. Bobby, whose father continued to feed his overblown sense of ego, crticize other kids & other parents in racist, culturally-ignorant attacks, & yet conveniently ignored the vicious, cruel streak his son bore across his heart.It was only natural that such over-indulged, soulless creatures would become predators of their own kind. And yet, the victim is probably the person who you would LEAST feel any kinship or even sympathy for. Far from being a kid who was destined to be the pillar of his community, the victim is simply an over-indulged, misognist brat whose overtly-homosexual tendencies were hidden behind a mask of menacing masochism.These teens had so many chances to turn themselves around, so many opportunities to build themselves as worthy people, & yet had so little commitment to doing anything with their lives. Jim Shultz has detailed vividly the sense of pointlessness & 'Look at ME!' attitude that colours these banal teens lives, & beggars the question: Yes, these kids are obnoxious monsters... but where are the parents when the mud is being flung?Written in clear, crisp prose & maintaining a cracking pace, Jim Shultz has achieved an admirable feat in finding motives for this pack of hopeless fools. Perhaps his greatest talent is in making the reader feel like they are really in the scene of the moment. I'll admit it - I've read this book 6 times, & will probably continue to re-read it occasionally as it is a story that never loses its sting. Every parent should read this book & take heed....Final verdict? Put down anything else - read "Bully" NOW!

I've always shunned true crime books, dismissing them as tabloid in nature. But Bully transcends the genre. Fast-paced like a suspense novel, it is written from a standpoint of moral absolutism so that a stinging lash of condemnation is rendered against a white upper middle class community in Florida that seems to be raising teenagers with no moral compass. The true story, the murder of Bobby Kent by his peers, is brutally shown not for sensationalism but to show how the murderers had no sense of right or wrong. In other words they were completely numb to the evil they were committing. There are some highly accessible companion books that deal with the loss of today's society's moral conscience. I'll name a few: The Wilding of America by Charles Derber; For Shame by James Twitchell (sadly out of print); and The Twilight of American Culture by Morris Berman.

This is the second time I've read this book. It is all too wild, the things these people do. I am 22 myself and find it impossible to think the way they do. A horrific murder, but humorous plan. They viciously kill a man, their "friend", and seem to see no harm in doing so. The author finds a kind of pity for, or kindship in the killers. The description of Bobby and lack of photo (other than his dead body) is disappointing. And beside making Marty & Lisa appear as "Romeo & Juliet"-like characters, the book is absolutely amazing. The hell they go through and create. Descriptive and stunning. An absolute MUST READ.