A fascinating book around profiling serial rapists and murderers. This book follows John as he joins the FBI and initiates the concept of profiling criminals in an attempt to help catch future criminals. The book looks at the introduction of this technique purely through John’s interest in how and why serial offenders commit the crimes they do.
Despite John providing details of various crimes in a way of illustrating how he “gets into the minds” of the criminals, this book is not overly gruesome. It has a great balance between horrific crimes and John’s personal journey – involving hard work, ridicule, family issues and medical issues from overworking as well as some great friendships developed along the way.
This book follows some of the crimes through the 70s when John began profiling serial rapists and murderers and how he was able to assist with capturing them and providing suggestions on how to interrogate them in order to get a confession. John describes how he interviewed many serial offenders in prisons to develop an understanding and find similarities between crimes and criminals. This led to John being more accurate with his ability to read all aspects of a case and provide information on the suspect they should be looking for. It also discusses the difficulties with getting this concept recognised with the FBI as well as acknowledged and utilised throughout America.
A fascinating read which provided a lot of insight into how profiling works and the history of its development. I give this book 4 stars.