Into the Kill Zone: A Cop's Eye View of Deadly Force

What’s it like to have official sanction to shoot and kill?  In this brilliantly written, controversial, and compelling book, author David Klinger—who himself shot and killed a suspect during his first year as an officer in the Los Angles Police Department—answers this and many other questions about what it’s like to live and work in the place where police officers have to make split-second decisions about life and death: The Kill Zone.

 Klinger, now a university professor, writes eloquently about what happens when police officers find themselves face-to-face with dangerous criminals, the excruciating decisions they have to make to shoot or to hold their fire, and how they deal with the consequences of their choices.

Writing with the narrative power of a Mailer, Capote, Chandler, or Hammett, Klinger presents the stories of other officers who have visited The Kill Zone to tell the reader what it’s like: the female cop who is overcome with remorse after shooting an assailant who turned out to be unarmed, the SWAT team member who has only one narrow shot at a robber holding two kids and their mother as human shields, the off-duty officer who engaged in a wild courthouse shoot-out with a man who looked just like his father, and many other intensely dramatic, beautifully told episodes that convey what officers experience before, during, and after gunfights.

Into the Kill Zone presents an original point of view about one of the most intriguing, controversial, and poorly understood aspects of American society. But most of all, it is a deeply moving, compulsively readable work of literary art.

Praise for Into the Kill Zone

"Puts the reader in the cop's shoes, and indeed behind the trigger."
—National Review Online

"Into the Kill Zone is a startling and important book—a stark,no-holds-barred journey into the minds of the people who have madethe ultimate decision. Klinger's prose captures the adrenaline, emotion, and split-second decisions his subjects faced in the field."
—Christopher Whitcomb, author, Cold Zero: Inside the F.B.I. Hostage Rescue Team

"Police, military, and those who love them; military andpolice history readers; and readers of popular fiction should all readthis book. Future depictions of combat should and will be heldagainst the standard set by Into the Kill Zone."
—Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, author, On Killing

"This book is a must-read for every police officer, policeexecutive, and member of the general public who wants to know what it's really like to shoot someone. From the gritty, piercingly painfulopening to the haunting, solemn ending, Into the Kill Zone reads likea novel and is almost impossible to put down."
—Daryl F. Gates, chief of Los Angeles Police Department, retired

"Sobre este título" puede pertenecer a otra edición de este libro.