Review by Booklist Review
Famous as a groundbreaking FBI criminal profiler, a prolific true-crime writer, and the catalyst for Mindhunter on Netflix, Douglas, along with coauthor Olshaker, reveals what he's discerned in the minds of notorious killers. Among the men he portrays are a high school chemistry teacher who beat, choked, sexually assaulted, and strangled a Brownie delivering Girl Scout cookies to his house; a man who took the lives of his friends' kids; and a medicinal murderer who prematurely hastened the deaths of dozens of old people in hospitals. The critical question in solving these cases is ""why?"" After a lifetime spent talking with the likes of David Berkowitz, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and Charles Manson, Douglas understands their common motivation: manipulation, domination, control. He focuses on four predators, but weaves in details about others and shares his opinions on famous cases and big legal questions, such as who qualifies as legally insane and psychotic, rather than as a criminal sociopath. Douglas's experiences seem to have made him wary of rehabilitation and parole. Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, he says, noting that as children many killers exhibited such disturbing behavior as torturing and killing cats. This fascinating and haunting expert account helps us understand why the most shocking homicides occur.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Douglas is legendary; his books are best-sellers, and this one will be of particularly urgent interest.--Karen Springen Copyright 2019 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Douglas, a pioneer in profiling serial killers for the FBI, and longtime cowriter Olshaker (The Anatomy of Motive: The FBI's Legendary Mindhunter Explores the Key to Understanding and Catching Violent Criminals) provide an eye-opening and chilling look into the minds of brutal murderers. Douglas and his colleagues had used their experiences talking with killers to develop rigorous interview methods that allowed them "to start correlating the crime to what was actually in the criminal's mind at the time," linking whatever evidence was left behind with the murderer's thoughts, emotions, and motivations. Those methods allowed the agents to add to the study of behavioral profiling by drawing conclusions about what the killers had in common; each offender "grew up without forming trusting bonds with other human beings during their formative years," and their motivations could be characterized as "Manipulation. Domination. Control." Douglas succeeds in taking readers inside his own mind as he worked to understand "four killers [he] confronted" after retiring from the Bureau, using these techniques. In order to make conversations with human monsters-such as Joseph Kondro, who raped and murdered the young daughters of people he knew-productive and educational, Douglas learned how to think like them. Douglas also explains the vital importance of restraining the "moral outrage" he feels at the horrors his interview subjects admit to, so that he can get them to open up about their motivations and triggers. By again separating fact from fiction, Douglas adds to lay readers' understanding of human evil. Agent: Frank Weimann, Folio Literary Management. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
