Ok, let me start out by saying, that the story in the book, "Bully", although very sad and disturbing, is very interesting, as far as true crime stories go. But, the book as written by the author is very flawed.
First of all, the book is VERY uneven, in several aspects.
Let's start with the title - "Bully: A True Story of High School Revenge". This title tends to imply that a ruthless bully finally gets what's coming to him. The actual narrative while exploring this concept seems to drift away from it. In other words, the story does not match the title. Bobby Kent is shown more as a victim, than the title would imply.
The first half of the book, covering the pre-murder days and the murder of Bobby is VERY detailed. It is detailed to the point that the details become hard to believe. The author, Jim Schutze, describes almost every situation down to the smallest detail and incident. He describes thoughts of the characters and describes motivations of said characters, as fact. Where did he get this information? Court documents, police reports, interviews with the killers? He never really says. It would be nice if he referenced, where particular information came from but he never does. The whole narrative is presented as fact, with no point of origin. I personally find it hard to believe that he found documentation of every fact presented, including thoughts Bobby Kent had just before his death. I may be wrong but I think that his imagination filled in the gaps.
On the other hand, the post-murder section of the book speeds by and at times is very sketchy. This transisition from a super detailed narrative to a narrative with big empty gaps is very disjolting. Only one of the trials, out of the 7 people convicted is covered in any amount of great detail. The rest are just brushed over rather quickly. I find this change as rather strange.
I watched an A&E documentary about the case several "facts" presented in the documentary were contrary to the book, despite, the author being interviewed in the documentary. One can also find the same discrepancies in old newspaper accounts of the case. I tend to believe the A&E documentary and newspaper articles over the book.
There are even certain minor facts within the book itself, which disagree with each other. For example, the cars which were driven to the murder site change within a few pages of each other. Since there is no explaination or even acknowledgement of this, one must assume that it was an error that slipped past the editors but it is rather obvious to the reader.
Another problem, that I personally have with "Bully" is its grim view of teenagers in 1993 South Florida. Schutze makes these dropout underachievers seem like the norm. I grew up and currently live in Hollywood, FL, the city that Bobby Kent and Marty Puccio lived in. I am around the same age, as most of the characters in the book. I can state for a fact that 1993 South Florida was not, as bad as Schutze portrays. YES, there is and was drug use. Yes, gangs exist. Yes, there was that prostitution ring. Yes, the murder did happen. But all of these (and other) things he describes, were not the norm. Schutze acts like this was the way of life for South Florida teenagers in 1993. These kids were dropouts from society. They were NOT "normal" kids, as Schulz tries to convince the reader. This may seem petty but being a teenager from Hollywood in this time period, I take offense for this bizarre version of teenage life being presented, in the way it is.
Ok, here is another thing. There is not one single picture of Bobby Kent (the victim), in the whole book. There is one picture of Bobby's corpse lying face down (and very hacked up) in a swamp. THAT'S IT! A reader can read the whole book and never have any idea what Bobby looked like. The whole book is about his murder and we have no idea what he looks like. I have never read a true life crime book before, that has pictures yet does not have a single living picture of the victim. Yet, on the A&E documenatry, there are several pictures of Bobby, in life. So they do exist but for some odd reason, Schutze doesn't (or maybe couldn't) include them. Heck, even the pictures of the killers are only police mugshots, not normal pictures (and yes they did have many "normal" pictures on the A&E documentary).
At the end of the book, Schutze tries to place a kind of blame on the killers' parents for somehow being at fault for what happened. EXCUSE ME, Mr. Schutze, I need to check but I am pretty sure that all of the killers except one were over the age of 18, at the time of the murder. They were (almost) all legally adults. How it is the parents fault is beyond me.
Also, "Bully" really needs an update section. 3 of the 7 convicted killers have been released and almost all of the sentences, including Marty Puccio's death sentence have been reduced on appeal.
So read the book, if you like. Just beware of its many faults. "Bully" might very well be more fiction than fact.
