John Douglas (1) (1945–)

Unlike many readers, I came to the book "Mindhunter" because I wanted to watch the Netflix series. The book is filled with actual cases Douglas assisted with, so if you are a fan of true crime, you will enjoy it. I was intrigued by the novel techniques Douglas used to capture killers. His profiles were often spot-on, but he was also a pioneer of using the media to draw out criminals, and he also created some effective interrogation tactics. Some of the cases Douglas describes are familiar to fans. Once again, I recommend the book to any true crime fan for the wealth of law enforcement information. I loved reading about how Douglas and his team solved these terrible crimes. However, "Mindhunter" flags whenever Douglas inserts too much of his personality--primarily his ego--into it. He constantly boasts about how busy and successful he was, how he flouted FBI conventions to get things done, how he singlehandedly developed the profiling wing, how his profiles were never wrong, even things as unnecessary to the story as how successful he was with women and how attractive his wife was. I suppose it takes a great deal of confidence to create profiles of unsubs and pass them off to other law enforcement personnel, convinced of their accuracy. Douglas at one point also veers from his profiles and starts giving the reader his opinions on capital punishment and ways to fix the amount of violent crime in the US. He is of course entitled to his beliefs, and he has a lot of direct experience to base them on, but they do not always have a place in this book. Douglas never shows us any adversity. Except for one case (Green River killer), he never mentions a profile that did not work. He even depicts his relationship with his wife as more successful now than ever, even though she divorced him. And he talks up his TV appearances and the fact he advised Thomas Harris ("Tom") when Harris was writing books like "Silence of the Lambs." We get it: Douglas is awesome. But he never seems to realize that his ego and opinions take a backseat to the gruesome killers in this book and how the killers were ultimately caught in the end. I enjoyed this and may pick up book two in this series but I did not love it.… (mer)

Part autobiography, part true crime, and part history of the FBI’s development of criminal profiling, this book kept me absorbed while waiting in line, avoiding chores, and at the ballpark waiting for the game to start. Not only does the author discuss how their theories were developed and tested, he gives many examples from real cases.

It does have flaws, though. The casual, spoken-word style of narrative implies that this was ghost-written from recorded interview sessions and is a little off-putting. Douglas also chooses to only share examples where their profiles were a match to the killer, giving the impression that they were flawless in their predictions. I know that can’t possibly be the case, and the very fact that he offers this pretense of perfection makes the whole book a little suspect, whereas if he’d included an honest discussion of trial and error and the limitations of this work, or even where it can go badly wrong if misapplied, I’d have more confidence in the conclusions/assertions he forwards.

Paperback version, found in a fairly yellowed and tattered state at a used bookstore.

I read this book for the Booklikes Halloween Bingo 2019, for the square Serial/Spree Killer: A sub-genre of crime fiction that involves the detection of serial or spree killers. That, of course, is the whole point of this book.… (mer)