Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit – John Douglas and Mark Olshaker

Synopsis: During his twenty-five-year career with the Investigative Support Unit, Special Agent John Douglas became a legendary figure in law enforcement, pursuing some of the most notorious and sadistic serial killers of our time: the man who hunted prostitutes for sport in the woods of Alaska, the Atlanta child murderer, and Seattle’s Green River Killer, the case that nearly cost Douglas his life.
As the model for Jack Crawford in The Silence of the Lambs, Douglas has confronted, interviewed, and studied scores of serial killers and assassins, including Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, and Ed Gein, who dressed himself in his victims’ peeled skin. Using his uncanny ability to become both predator and prey, Douglas examines each crime scene, reliving both the killer’s and the victim’s actions in his mind, creating their profiles, describing their habits, and predicting their next moves.
Now in chilling detail and featuring a new introduction, Mindhunter takes readers behind the scenes of some of John Douglas’s most gruesome, fascinating, and challenging cases – and into the darkest recesses of our worst nightmares.

There was so much information jam packed into this book. I was in love with the Netflix show Mindhunter which led me to this book. After Netflix cancelled the show (insert crying face) I decided it was time to take a stab at working my way through this book. I ended up listening to the audiobook so I could keep a more steady pace. There was so much packed into this book that I was having a hard time just sitting down to read it. I am amazed at how this man’s brain works. I think that is what I enjoyed the most out of this book was following him through is process of making a profile, and then as the case went on learning how accurate his profile was for the suspect. While I am always interested in true crime and hearing these stories, I could not have investigating them be my profession. Getting that deep into someones mind to find out how they tick and why they do the things they do would start to wear on me fairly quickly. I will watch all the true crime documentaries and read all the books, but I will leave the hunting of serial killers up to someone else.

Would I recommend this book: Yes

“Behavior reflects personality. The best indicator of future violence is past violence. To understand the “artist,” you must study his “art.” The crime must be evaluated in its totality. There is no substitute for experience, and if you want to understand the criminal mind, you must go directly to the source and learn to decipher what he tells you. And, above all: Why + How = Who.”