Oh boy, it has taken me a while to gather my thoughts on Mindhunter. I’ve always been interested in true crime. I love watching the likes of 48 Hour Mystery, Snapped and Crimewatch etc.
I read this book over the course of two weeks whilst I was visiting family in Estonia in September. It all started when my boyfriend and I watched the whole season of Unabomber on Netflix in one day.
Mindhunter by John Douglas & Mark Olshaker
4.5 out of 5
Published in 2017, by Cornerstone
You can order a copy from Amazon, Waterstones
Blurb: John Douglas is a former FBI Special Agent and expert in criminal profiling and behavioural science. He made a career of looking evil in the eye – and understanding it. No wonder that he was the inspiration for Special Agent Jack Crawford in The Silence of the Lambs, as well as the film’s consultant on the reality of serial killers.
Douglas invented and established the practice of criminal profiling, and submerged himself in the world of serial killers in a quest to understand why they killed, and to help prevent more innocent lives from being ended by future killers. As his serial crime unit developed from a derided two-bit operation in a dingy officer to one of the FBI’s elite task forces, Douglas personally confronted the most terrible crimes of the age, including those of Jeffrey Dahmer, Charles Manson, Ted Bundy and the Atlanta child murderer.
My thoughts: I was absolutely taken by the criminal profiling and knew I needed to get my hands on the Mindhunter book before getting into the series. (We are yet to watch the series though..)
Mindhunter is by far one of the most interesting but difficult books I’ve read. John Douglas has described the cases he has been involved with in so much detail that occasionally I had to put the book down to take time to digest what I had just read.
Singularity is almost invariably a clue. The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more difficult it is to bring home.
One of the most memorable cases for me was the one of Ed Kemper, who killed numerous women, including his own mother and his grandparents. Chilling. You can read more about him here.
The book wasn’t just pure gore though. John wrote about his journey of becoming one of the first and arguably one of the best criminal profilers in the world. It truly was a fascinating journey.
4.5 stars out of 5.
What do you think about criminal profiling?
If you have already read the book, what was the most memorable case for you?
