Just Finished Reading: I Don't Like Mondays – The True Story Behind America's First Modern School Shooting by N Leigh Hunt (FP: 2022/2026) [309pp] 

I don't remember the actual shooting when it happened on 29th January 1979. I don't even know if it was reported here. It probably was, being SO unusual at the time, but if it did then it didn't register. I only really remember knowing about it after the Boomtown Rats made her (apparently disputed) reason for the shooting into a hit song (below) – at least in the UK. It's also why I 'clocked' this book when I saw it in a local "we sell EVERYTHING shop'. 

The story is surprisingly simple. One morning 16-year-old Brenda Spencer told her father that she wasn't feeling well and would be taking a day off school. Shortly after her father left for work Brenda got her .22 rifle and, from her own front door, began firing across the street at her local Elementary school killing the Principle and Head Janitor and injuring 8 children all under ten. When she was finally arrested and was asked WHY she did what she did (a particularly unusual thing at the time but increasing common event today) she is supposed to have responded "I Don't Like Mondays" - which she later denied. 

Covering the shooting in detail (including extracts from the police dispatch and SWAT Team) before moving onto the arrest and fallout from the event this started out quite strong, but I slowly became a little bored as, despite the attention (and sometimes honestly over-attention) to detail, it didn't feel like there was a whole lot of SUBSTANCE here. I'm not sure exactly what it was, but I did feel more than once like I was making my way through a plot made of cotton candy. I think that a big part of that was the fact that Brenda never went to trial (having eventually pled guilty) and that we never got to the bottom of why she did it or what circumstances made her at such a young age into a person who could gun down little kids in the school yard. There was talk of abuse (both physical and psychological), a broken home, drugs, a history of petty theft and 'trouble making' but nothing substantial or of substance. It was more than a little frustrating. 

 I was definitely looking for much more analysis here, both of the event and the larger (post-1979/future) context but that was rather thin on the ground. Whilst not a 'bad' book I think this needed a little less focus on Brenda's jail time (and seemingly endless delusions of eventually going free) and more focus on the causes and impacts of school shootings. Reasonable and more on school shootings and other aspects of the 'Dark Side' of American history/culture to come.