VIOLENCE FOR VIOLENCE’S SAKES : Killer at Large : A VIOLENT ACT, <i> By Alec Wilkinson (Alfred A. Knopf: $22; 226 pp.)</i>

Many books have strong personalities that you either click with or you don’t, and introducing a good book to a good friend can feel as if you’re setting them up on a date. If I were to set up Alec Wilkinson’s “A Violent Act” with any friend of mine, I would say, “It seems cold and controlling at first, but once you get to know this book, it’s great.”

The dust jacket categorizes “A Violent Act” as “Non Fiction/True Crime,” and that information coupled with a deceptively straightforward opening made me feel, after the first few pages, that I was on easy and familiar ground.

“On the day that began the most desperate phase of his anxious life, Mike Wayne Jackson rose early. . . . He lived without running water, electric light or cooking gas. . . . On the morning of this particular day--Monday, September 22, 1986--he killed his probation officer with a shotgun when the officer came to the door of his house. In fleeing, he committed other violent crimes. . . . By the end of the day, he was the most sought-after criminal at large in America.”

No problem, I thought. Wilkinson is setting up a verbal documentary, a book that might (because of the words desperate and anxious ) pull in painfully close to Mike Jackson, depicting him as a pathetic, scared man who badly needed the help he never received. I’ll get to feel really sorry and maybe frightened since, after all, this is True Crime.

Wrong.

Reading further into the opening section, it becomes clear this is not a feeling-sorry type of book. Jackson’s actions over the rest of the day--exactly how many cars were stolen, what hostages were taken, and who was killed--are described in precise, almost clinical language. It reads like a police report.

The second section moves to the wife of Tom Gahl, Jackson’s murdered probation officer. “Nancy was on the telephone in the kitchen with a friend when she heard the knock on the door. . . . When she saw who was waiting and their somber expressions, she said the first thing that came to her mind.

“ ‘Is he dead?’

“Tom’s boss said, ‘Let us in,’ and once they were inside she said again, ‘Is he dead?’ and he said, ‘Yes.’

“She found her way back to the kitchen and sat down. . . . One of the men asked Nancy if she didn’t think it would be a good idea to call her parents, and she said, ‘Yeah, that’s a good idea,’ and she did and sat back down. Then one of the men asked if she shouldn’t call Tom’s parents, and she said, ‘Yeah, that ‘s a good idea,’ and she did and sat down again.”

Stylistically this is similar to the opening, except now the flatness is undercut with terrible shock and pain. Nancy Gahl had a loving marriage, and good kids. Aha, I thought. Forget Jackson, maybe this is a book about how his victims learn to cope. Maybe it’s about loss. I read on, ready to be deeply moved by the courage, or grief, or whatever, of Nancy Gahl. Wrong again.

In spite of solid writing, the portrait of Nancy Gahl never quite gets beyond The Grieving Widow, someone I only felt for in a removed, friend-of-a-friend way. Yet it’s clear Alec Wilkinson is enforcing distance intentionally; what’s not clear is why. His writing has so much muscle, so much power and purpose, that it’s impossible to believe he would’ve just forgotten about the human part.

The third section left me still interested, but with even more questions. Here more than 50 pages are devoted to Mike Jackson’s life, from 1964 when he was 18 up to just a few days before the murders. “He made visits to a doctor in Tupelo. He felt nervous and depressed and his head ached. Sometimes he was nauseated and threw up. One of the doctors . . . observed that Mike paced the floor and that his manner was blunt and without emotion. The doctor noted . . . that his activities were severely restricted and that he was unable to handle money.”

Just as Nancy Gahl is The Grieving Widow, Mike Jackson becomes The Crazy Killer, as remote and two-dimensional as the paper silhouetted man people use for target practice. I wanted to be emotionally involved on some level, but again and again, Wilkinson thwarted my every effort to care. Yes, he has compiled extensive quotes from people who knew Jackson, and they are utilized seamlessly. Yes, the details are vivid. But I kept wondering: Why did he choose this story? Why am I even reading it?

In the fourth section everything becomes clear. After he killed Tom Gahl, Jackson fled through two states, seemingly without a plan, to a small town in Missouri called Wright City. Population 1,200. On the way there he murdered two more people and terrorized more than a dozen.

In Wright City the Missouri State Highway Patrol and the FBI began an enormous manhunt. They set up roadblocks and carefully looked in the trunks of each car that went through. They searched every square inch of land. They brought in cadaver dogs (animals trained to smell dead flesh) and even a specially equipped plane that could detect body heat on the ground. Mike Jackson might be hiding anywhere. As the manhunt continued, just about everyone in Wright City began to carry a gun, terrified that Jackson would appear in their yard, their garage, their bedroom.

“An experience that unnerved the drivers of the school buses was the sight . . . of children at the bus stop waiting among fathers holding rifles and shotguns and pistols.” There were many reported sightings of Jackson, but nothing panned out. “Returning to their houses after shopping or running errands or from work, people would stop at the command post and arrange to be accompanied by an FBI agent, who would search the house before they went in. . . . The schools were still locked and guarded. No recesses or gym classes were held outdoors.”

Almost everyone quoted is referred to as “A Taxpayer” or “A Citizen,” and that’s when it finally hit that I was reading this book completely wrong. “A Violent Act” is about all widows, all killers and all small towns in America. It’s about crime and fear, but not in a sensational way. It’s about us. And when read like that, as sociology instead of story, “A Violent Act” is nothing short of brilliant. By refusing to allow the transitory voyeuristic thrill of identifying with killer or victim, the book allows a much deeper thrill: identifying with a culture that creates that violence.