The Mystery of the Lone Wolf Killer

For the first time, the life and mind of Anders Behring Breivik, the most unexpected of mass murderers, is examined and set in the context of wider criminal psychology.

July 22, 2011 was the darkest day in Norway's history since Nazi Germany's invasion. It was one hundred eighty-nine minutes of terror—from the moment the bomb exploded outside a government building until Anders Behring Breivik was apprehended by the police at Utoya Island. Breivik murdered seventy-seven people, most of them teenagers and young adults, and wounded hundreds more. The massacre left the world in shock.

Breivik is a new type of mass murderer, and he is not alone. Indeed, he is the archetypal "lone wolf killer," often overlooked until the moment they commit their crime. He has inspired others like him, just as Breivik was inspired by Timothy McVeigh and Theodore Kaczynski. No other killer has...