JODI Picoult is one of those writers who seems to be able to do it all. Her novels are page-turning best-sellers which are utterly un-put-downable.

And yet they are so much more, too. With chilling coolness, she dissects the darkest recesses of the human soul: writing about those small family betrayals and misunderstandings that grow and fester and lead, ultimately, to hurt and tragedy.

To read a Picoult novel is to look deep inside yourself and wonder.

In Nineteen Minutes she turns her all-seeing eye to the subject of bullying - and its potentially awful consequences.

Stirling is a small New Hampshire town - one of those American towns as sweet as Apple Pie where everyone knows everyone.

Then teenager Peter Houghton, a thin, harmless, bookish boy, walks into his school one day armed with an arsenal of guns and, in just 19 minutes, kills ten of his fellow students.

That is where the book begins. Much of the rest of the 400-plus pages is devoted to a riveting account of what drove a perfectly ordinary young man like Peter to such a hideous act.

He was mercilessly bullied, it turns out, from the moment he first set foot in the school and his new lunch box was throw out of a window.

Over the years, the class jocks' - the sports-loving, girl-dating alpha males of his class - relentlessly grind down his sense of self-worth; pushing him, shoving him, dunking his head in the toilets, locking him in a locker and ritually humiliating him in every way they can find.

It is a stunning, shaming, powerful account which leaves the reader wholly on the side of the young murderer. And yet, as so often with Picoult, at the end there is a further twist which sheds fresh light on some of the other main characters. Peter, it turns out, is not the only one to have been twisted and perverted by the vicious class dynamics.

A poignant, gripping, haunting read - and a sure-fire best-seller.