by Erik Larson
First published 1994
One frigid morning, a 16-year-old Virginia boy named Nicholas Elliot walked into his high school with a Cobray M-11/9 - a weapon marketed as "the gun that made the eighties roar" - hidden in his backpack. By mid-morning, he had killed one teacher and wounded another. Tracing the Cobray's path from design to Elliot's hands, Erik Larson exposes the lax laws and skewed interests that have perpetuated a culture of gun violence in America, where 22,000 die by gunfire each year. Compelling and timely, Lethal Passage offers realistic solutions to this crisis that has reached epic proportions.
Genres: 20th-century, crime, social-issues, non-fiction, 21st-century, true-crime
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: real-events, social-commentary
Setting: United States, Virginia, Virginia Beach
272 pages · Paperback · Crown
Content warnings: violence