This novel, based on true events, gives the reader a ringside seat to a cross-country rampage that snuffed out multiple lives in 1950 and ’51. A U.S. Army lieutenant reports his twin brother missing, after he fails to show up for a highly anticipated family visit, and a bullet-riddled car’s discovery in Oklahoma leads police to fear for Carl Mosser, his wife and three children. It quickly prompts the largest nationwide manhunt since the 1930s, when John Dillinger was on the run. A handgun receipt implicates Billy Cook, a parolee with an extensive record and utter contempt for authority (“I’m used to being thrown anywhere,” he taunted his jailers). Law enforcement officials frantically scour the West, with Cook always a step ahead, killing a salesman in Palo Verde, California, and taking a deputy sheriff hostage in Blythe. After he crosses the Mexican border, it’s up to local police to capture him and keep his hostages safe. Later, a prolonged debate about Cook’s mental state plays out: The same man who suggested seeing a movie to his hostages also shot animals to wield power over them (“Killing just to kill”). Parsing whether Cook was mentally ill isn’t simple, and some find it beside the point, as Kukla suggests; one of Cook’s pursuers reminds himself that when pure evil surfaces, putting it down is the only option: “He had to be a driving force to bring it to an end.” The title is a clever allusion to the 1971 song of the same name by The Doors, whose second verse drew inspiration from Cook’s atrocities. Kukla’s crisp, no-nonsense storytelling will allow readers to debate the issues the case raised, particularly in how it highlights 1950s American society’s well-scrubbed exterior, and the embittered entitlement at the heart of Cook’s killing spree. The killer’s notoriety has long faded, yet this novel serves as an effective reminder that the questions surrounding his motivations are no less persistent—and no easier to answer.
