`Rage' Tells Of Sad, Empty Life

"A Rage to Kill and Other True Cases" by Ann Rule Pocket Star Books, $7.99

Only a true-crime writer with Ann Rule's formidable skills as a storyteller could somehow fashion a readable tale out of the sad, empty life of Silas Garfield Cool.

Cool, as many Seattleites will recall, was the 43-year-old loner who shot and killed a Metro bus driver, and then himself, as passengers on Route 359 were headed downtown on a rare sunny afternoon last November. The bus careened into a terrifying plunge over the side of the Aurora Bridge, landing 50 feet below into a Fremont neighborhood.

Rule's account of Cool's deadly rampage, which also killed one passenger and injured many others, is the featured story of "A Rage to Kill," her latest collection of true-crime cases. And, like the other nine stories in this book, her telling of the bus-crash saga is filled with those trademark touches that make Rule's readers feel like they were there: sensitive interviews with the victims' friends and families, forensic details that are informative without being gruesome, a look at why the killer's life took such a tragic turn.

But somehow, this riveting case, which kept Seattle television viewers transfixed during that post-Thanksgiving weekend, doesn't have quite the reader-grabbing appeal of other Rule books.

The difference, of course, is that she usually writes about characters who - despite their terrible crimes - have a certain appeal, be it charisma, intelligence or physical beauty. (Her last featured subject was the notorious Seattle bank robber William Scott Scurlock, who was nicknamed "Hollywood" because of his flamboyant style.)

But in the case of Cool, his life was so anonymous that he lived in a Seattle apartment for 13 years without anyone - even his landlord - knowing him.

"More than any case I've written about to date," Rule says in her introduction, "this one demonstrates that there are people who live and breathe and move among us who live in a completely alien world. In Seattle, on the day after a holiday that traditionally signifies warmth and love, one of those people brought untold pain to perfect strangers. I had to know who he was. . . ."