At Close Range

By Stefan Kanfer

TITLE: A VIOLENT ACT

AUTHOR: ALEC WILKINSON

PUBLISHER: KNOPF; 226 PAGES; $22

THE BOTTOM LINE: Unflinching close-ups of sociopath, hunter and victims developed by a master of the true-crime drama.

On the afternoon of Sept. 22, 1986, Indianapolis, Indiana, probation officer Tom Gahl paid a call on his new client, "Crazy" Mike Jackson. The nickname was not frivolous; Jackson was a 200-lb., 40-year-old addict with a history of irrational behavior. As Gahl approached, Jackson abruptly opened fire with his shotgun. He listened to the wounded officer plead for his life, then pulled the trigger twice more at close range. Fifteen minutes later, the gunman, having disguised his face and beard with silver spray paint, held up a grocery store. When the counterman was a little slow emptying the cash register, Jackson blew him away. One of the most vicious crime sprees of the '80s had begun.

"If it bleeds, it leads" is the dictum of local television news. By now the public has grown numb to acts of savagery, and only a handful of journalists can still arouse feelings of shock or pity. New Yorker writer Alec Wilkinson is one of them.

His fourth work of nonfiction examines both killer and victims -- particularly Gahl's widow and children. Nancy Gahl cannot bear to know too much about Mike Jackson, the author notes. "If he is a man who struggled to contain impulses that more often than not overpowered him, and that no one seemed able to help him understand, then he is different from the rest of us only in the severity of his disorder, not in its content." That is the classic "we are all murderers" defense, and Wilkinson is wise not to push it. He is more effective when he takes a close look at Jackson's ex-wife Carolyn, the quintessential battered woman. Her husband was chronically brutal and unfaithful; for amusement he liked to sneak LSD into her food. Yet even now she proclaims her love and longs to ask him "what had happened, and if there's a hereafter I hope I have that chance."

That will be their only meeting place. Within days of his flight from Indianapolis, Jackson made the FBI's Most Wanted list. But the feds were not the ones who ran him to earth in Wright City, Missouri. That honor belonged to J.R. Buchanan, a professional tracker right out of a Clint Eastwood movie. J.R. was famous for phrases like "Put your skill against ever what you're hunting" -- and that is exactly what he did.

Although the tone of A Violent Act is terse and dispassionate, it contains the elements of classic tragedy: terror, vengeance, catharsis. After the garish denouement, reports the author, there was even a dramatic letdown. As one of the Wright City folk stated, "It was like there wasn't nothing ; important to do anymore." She was wrong. One significant task remained -- giving dimension to people and events -- and Wilkinson has seen to it.