Early on the morning of September 22, 1986, Mike Jackson shot and killed a man he had never met--his newly appointed parole officer, Tom Gahl. Out of that single act of violence the award-winning author of Big Sugar has created a work of journalism that lays bare the full scope of the concern over violence in our society.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
When we read about violence, we hunger for explanations that will reassure us that violence is understandable, perhaps preventable. Yet this elegantly written book--about a madman who kills his probation officer then goes on a rampage of carjackings, robberies, and more murders across southern Indiana--offers only facts. As Christopher Lehmann-Haupt writes in the New York Times, "Surprisingly, one of the most powerful effects of A Violent Act is to make you feel how callous to violence we've been made.... By telling an apparently simple story yet not presuming to understand what made it happen, Mr. Wilkinson has restored the mystery and terror of violence to their true and properly overwhelming scales." This is true crime as an accomplished nonfiction writer tells it (portions of the book were first published in The New Yorker): in a soft tone of voice, with silences in which the pain and horror can be keenly felt.
From Publishers Weekly
New Yorker writer Wilkinson chronicles an ex-convict's murder of his probation officer and subsequent rampage across rural Missouri.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Alec Wilkinson's A Violent Act,
By
This review is from: Violent Act (Paperback)
This true account of the spree murders perpetrated by Mike Wayne Jackson in Indianapolis in 1986 gives the reader more than just a typical "true crime" story. It seems as if Wilkinson divided the telling of this tragedy into three parts: the murders, the search for Jackson, and the day- to-day stories of the victims following the murders. The stories of each person involved in the crime (including Jackson's mother, the first victim's widow, etc.) are each written extremely well, and each helps us to understand the crime better, as all of the people that were involved in this crime are trying to do.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Well Worth Reading,
This review is from: A Violent Act (Hardcover)
Alec Wilkinson, in "A Violent Act" has written a true crime documentary which is quite unlike most of the boilerplate true crime being written. This book, as opposed to much of the unintersting tripe being marketed, was obviously a long time in the writing.
This is a story about Mike Jackson, a dangerous small time burglar and hold-up man who kills his probation officer and leads authorities on a week long search. The book is well-written, literate and intelligent, and is obviously the product of extensive interviewing and research. The effects of the murder on the victim's family, which include some odd and increasingly strange contacts by the family of the killer, are discussed in detail. The major focus of the book however is Mike Jackson. I can not overemphasize the depth of the author's research and of his presentation of Jackson's life: the fact that early on he exhibited the inability to cope with simple childhood experiences; his inability to perform even the most menial jobs except criminal ones where no continuing personal interaction was necessary; the long stretches he spent in jail; and his descent into psychosis. The reason I gave the book 4 rather than 5 stars is that I felt Wilkinson went on too long, and ultimately excessively, about the search efforts of the FBI and other police groups. While some of this was necessary and interesting, Wilkinson described the police efforts for each day of an effort that lasted over a week. Since most of these days were numbingly the same, Wilkinson's narrative also becomes numbing during this part of the book. The in depth study of Mike Jackson is however superb. Wilkinson writes about him with such understanding and empathy that his writing about Jackson, a man who less talented writers would simply dismiss as an evil career criminal, sometimes approaches tenderness. This book is well worth reading and will be appreciated by fans of true crime who are interested in real understanding an event.
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