Mindhunter

Mindhunter

4.02 of 5 stars 4.02  ·  rating details  ·  4,764 ratings  ·  261 reviews
What makes a serial killer?





Only one man really knows. FBI Special Agent and expert in criminal profiling and behavioural science, John Douglas. A man who has looked evil in the eye and made a vocation of understanding it. Now retired, Douglas can let us inside the FBI elite serial crime unit and into the disturbed minds of some of the most savage serial killers in the worl...more
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Published April 28th 1997 by Arrow (first published January 1st 1995)
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Maureen
Aug 08, 2008 Maureen rated it 3 of 5 stars  ·  review of another edition Recommends it for: no one in particular
Recommended to Maureen by: research
Shelves: crime
I must say, this book is a mixed bag. The story of the development of criminal profiling is certainly an interesting one, but I don't believe that Mr. Douglas deserves quite as much credit as he is willing to give himself. He also freely characterizes the killers in this book as monsters. Having worked with a number of this kind of person, I tend to see them more as broken human beings who deserve to be punished. The "monster" epithet implies that society has no responsibility in the way these k...more
Alex Hawkey
This book is written buy one of the FBI's top profiles, John Douglas. The man has worked on the cases that are world renowned for being some of the most psychotic killings to date. He has researched killers and rapists, helped police officers catch the most dangerous of criminals, and taught local law enforcement how to pick out the warning signs of chronic offenders and dangerous people. This book tells of his life and how he came to be the man that would one day be the inspiration for Jack Cra...more
Lightreads
So John Douglas is great when he’s talking about serial rape and child murder, and then he’s intensely obnoxious when he’s talking about anything else. So I guess it’s a good thing he mostly talks about rape and murder?

And when I say “John Douglas,” by the way, I mean John Douglas or his co/ghost writer, because who knows who wrote what. All I know is when this book talks about crime, it’s focused and intelligent and compassionate. And when it’s talking about anything else – the FBI, his home li...more
Jennifer
I've read a number of John Douglas' books since the first one was published. I picked up Mind Hunter for two reasons:

1) I really like "The Silence of the Lambs" (movie) and this book told something about the criminal profilers depicted in the film

2) I've always been fascinated by the tools used to solve crimes, especially the scientific approach. When I learned that a group of FBI agents actually had to guts to go into prisons and interview many criminals (not just serial killers, although that...more
Bob Mayer
I used to think profilers were a bunch of, well, hooey. How did they come up with the profiles? Because a profile is not CSI evidence. It's not lifting a fingerprint. It's assessing a crime and coming up wit the type of person who would do it. Then I read this book years ago and Douglas describes how they formed the Behavioral Science Unit in the FBI. And it made sense. A certain type of person acts a certain type of way. I've since used profiling in my Warrior Writer program since you can profi...more
Dan
Very interesting book, I could not put it down. Mr. Douglas tells a compelling story about how profiling of extremely evil people works, giving us a behind the scenes look at his craft. Warning, some of the details of what these violent predators do are very disturbing, and while he doesn't go into great detail about their actions, he does necessarily give you the summary of it, which is still disturbing. I read until 4am, and had to quit because I started seeing things in the dark. I honestly d...more
Alana
In Mind Hunter, FBI profiler John Douglas describes his career in behavioral science chasing down some of the most brutal and most notorious serial killers of the past several decades.


Perhaps the weakest part of the book is its organization. Douglas jumps around in time from case to case - sometimes in the middle of describing cases, and he references things that he hasn't yet described - or he says the same things over and over. Also he spends quite a bit of time on his childhood dream of being...more
Nathan
In a recent interview at a Prosecutor's office I was asked what the most recent 'good' book I read was. I said that I was in the middle of this one - and it is fascinating. It is like reading a modern Sherlock Holmes fiction.

This is a biography about an FBI agent to profiles serial killers in an effort to help local police departments focus their search. And in some cases, he vividly describes crime scenes of horror -so be warned!

1) I, apparently, had no idea that there were so many of these bad...more
trishtrash
This is a darkly fascinating topic that begins in an era that defined the FBI's own profile for years afterwards. Douglas follows the evolution of the ISU (then known somewhat unfortunately as 'BS') as he and his colleagues learned to meet the challenges presented by its particular types of quarry... how they identified these men, (down to details as seemingly unrelated as the kind of car they would drive), the existence of 'signatures' as opposed to Modus Operandi, and at the root of it all, wh...more
Rebecca
Jul 17, 2009 Rebecca rated it 4 of 5 stars  ·  review of another edition
Recommended to Rebecca by: Sheila
Shelves: reference-books
As someone who's a huge fan of shows like Criminal Minds and books like Silence of the Lambs, I was very excited to get my hands on a book that dealt with the nonfiction, more scientific aspect of serial killers and their psyches. I was also very pleased to find that the books and shows I've enjoyed so much are also somewhat accurate; that makes me enjoy them even more.

John Douglas, or his co-writer, did an excellent job keeping a very complicated topic accessible for the rest of us. His own sen...more
Mycroft
Believe it or not, this is one of the must useful books I have ever read. It has application in understanding business situations and co-workers. It has applications in interacting with family and friends. It has application in dating.

And no, I am not suggesting that everyone I know is a serial killer. But in understanding the analysis required to identify the type of person who committed a crime, one can also quickly read the motivations of people around you. For example, within my profession,...more
Bean Delphiki
If you're deeply fascinated by criminology (and you're curious about the history of profiling), or you're a big fan of John E. Douglas, this book might be worth checking out. If, on the other hand, you're looking for a straightforward presentation of serial offender types and example cases, you're going to want to skip this one.

Douglas clearly fancies himself a bit of a storyteller, but he lacks any sense of drama or poetry that might make the book more readable. Instead, he comes off as a bit f...more
Emily
Jun 01, 2010 Emily rated it 4 of 5 stars  ·  review of another edition Recommends it for: people who don't mind gore
This is the sort of book that you can't look away from, but you're a bit embarrassed to be seen reading. There's something just vaguely improper about reading so voraciously about someone else's tragedy. But that aside, it's fascinating. The techniques Douglas writes about are becoming sadly familiar due to all the cop dramas on TV - I say "sadly" because they really are incredible feats of induction and don't deserve to be trivialized by CBS.

The historical part of this is pretty dry, but the l...more
Matt
Well I thought this was a very interesting book. If your interested in Criminal profiling ,this book goes into exhaustive detail about various criminal types and the nature of the criminal themselves and how that correlates to what kind of crime was committed.

The facts and procedures are well written, but I found myself taking a break every now and then. Being an excellent profiler doesn't mean your a good and engaging writer.

That beign said I read this while reading other books. It does bring...more
Brian
This is how Mindhunter works: Douglas tells us about a crime, like a young girl who was raped and left for dead or a twenty-something who was murdered and tied up in an odd position in line with some odd ritualistic fantasy. From that he explains how he profiled the suspect: usually it's a male in his late twenties to early thirties who dresses scruffily and has next to no social skills. Finally, he relays how he went about catching said suspect.

The book is repetitive in this nature, but might...more
Lisa H.
Interesting read. This guy was at the heart of the development of the profiling unit of the FBI, and reading about how he developed his techniques for understanding the mind of a serial killer (largely a process of semi-educated trial and error) was pretty fascinating. I don't know how much his co-author was involved, because the vernacular style of the narrative (and the tendency to jump around a good deal) felt like the voice of an individual, and one not all that polished in the writing depar...more
Diana
Il precursore delle teorie per comprendere il comportamento dei serial killer scrive un libro. Ed è un capolavoro.
Pur trattandosi di un saggio e non di un romanzo riesce ad appassionarti e tenerti incatenato alle pagine per scoprire come ragiona un killer seriale, cosa fa scattare nella sua mente il desiderio di uccidere, perchè rapisce, come si comporta con le vittime e successivamente con le forze dell'ordine, se ciò che è è relazionato a ciò che è stato e ciò che ha subito.

Esistono cattivi pu...more
Abby
This was the first of the John Douglas works that I'd read.
I would say read this book in daylight. (I have a desperate fear of reading this one in the dark. {Maybe I'm just lame}) I wouldn't suggest (like a mouldy old joke states) reading this in the Police Station.
But, it is well written. Actually, I felt as though we were in his study/library, and he was telling me about his career and the serial killers he'd either interviewed or caught.
What did I learn from this book: There are no signs att...more
Tom
Douglas is the real thing: brilliant, insightful FBI profiler and a legend in the field. This breathless telling of all the cases from the 70s to the 90s he was involved in and serial killers interviewed including the well-known (Speck, Kemper, Alaska's Hansen, etc.) to more obscure but among the goriest and most extreme crimes I have ever read highlighted. In the extremity appears to lie the success of the profiler's art. As Douglas lays out, such a reading of the scene wouldn't work at a muggi...more
Pascale Plänk Steig
A really, really interesting book written by the lead profiler at the FBI Behavioral Sciences Lab in Quantico, Virginia. Surprisingly, his work takes over his life and he eventually gets divorced. That said, this book made me rethink the ideas I’ve held on to all my life: that people are nice deep down. The author makes a strong case for personal responsibility; despite horrific experiences in one’s life, at the core, one makes choices, either to act or not to act, and he (rightfully) prefers to...more
Mari Stroud
John Douglas puts his own personality forward with no varnish in this book, which is brave and cool because he's not always that pleasant a person. However, it doesn't make any bones about the fact that he is personally wound up in these cases (given their nature, who couldn't be if they chose this as a profession?) and manages to make technical diagnoses and details easy to digest to the laymen. (Still hasn't convinced me of the value of the death penalty however, sorry.) His style is very much...more
Stacy Green
John Douglas is one of the founding fathers of criminal profiling and the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit. Mindhunter is a fascinating synopsis of Douglas's rise from a troublemaking college student to an outstanding psychologist.

The book chronicles his rise through the FBI ranks and the struggles to get criminal profiling recognized as a serious law enforcement tool. Douglas profiled many well known serial killers such as The Atlanta Child Murderer and the Green River Killer, but those are just...more
C.E.
What can be said about the great profiler John Douglas that hasn't already been said? This book belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in crime fighting - it's a breathtaking account of the early days of the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit from one of the men who was instrumental in the invention of modern criminal profiling. I have the great honor to know Mr. Douglas, but I read the book long before I met him. His personal humility and unassuming nature is all the more impressive given his im...more
Molly OBrien
I have always loved reading about Behavioral Science and the FBI as I originally wanted to get into it as a profession. Reading this book was hard, as many of the stories were horrible, but it was fascinating looking into the minds of serial killers. John Douglas is amazing in capturing some of the most horrific serial killers we have ever seen, and not just in the US. I enjoyed hearing about his cases as he let you in on HOW they caught the killer, really going in depth about their strategies a...more
Colleen
This book is not a light read. Douglas is a serial killer/rapist profiler, and though Douglas is purely factual when describing some of the cases he worked on, it is very disturbing how horrible people can be to other people. I had to skip paragraphs when they got too graphic for me. Otherwise this book was fascinating. I've always been interested in how things work and this book details how he got started in criminal profiling and how he learned from his many cases. I'm glad there are people ou...more
Jolene
Dec 31, 2009 Jolene rated it 4 of 5 stars  ·  review of another edition Recommends it for: anyone interested in law enforcement, crime
As someone in the law enforcement field, I really enjoyed this book. I found the work of an FBI profiler to be fascinating and it was amazing how spot-on the Unit was when analyzing and narrowing down their suspect. There were several passages in the book that really resonated with me - in particular, I enjoyed and agreed with his thoughts on the idea that dangerousness is situational. Offenders can be model prisoners, when in an orderly environment with few choices but in the "real world" the b...more
Jana
The author brought the practice of profiling to the FBI, refined it and legitimized it. In this memoir he cites cases where the profiling “tools” that he taught other law enforcement agents are put to practice with success. I learned the difference between a perpetrator’s MO and signature. I learned the three indicators that are often present singly or together in a serial killer’s early life. I learned that computers can’t profile. (I also learned that the FBI calls in psychics upon occasion, w...more
Sean
This should be an important book but alas, as other reviewers have noted, it is too self-important. There's a lot of interesting and useful information here but you have to wade through the detail of Mr Douglas personal story which didn't interest me in the slightest. Apart from the profiling itself, the interrogation technique he developed is very instructive. Just be prepared to be distracted in the hunt by his opinions, which may be hardly unusual for an FBI officer but of little use to the s...more
Anna Sörries
This was a really disturbing but good book. It is not only about the beginnung of the BAU but of the different murders. I'm a huge Criminal Minds fan, I like to know why people can do what they are doing. How they can bahave like they do, be cruel, violent and murder.
I can never imagine to work in such a field because you have the face the human evil every day. I am impressed by Douglas and his team to handle this kind of work.
The book doesn't give all the details but it gives a glimpse of what...more
Hunter
Jul 29, 2012 Hunter rated it 4 of 5 stars  ·  review of another edition Recommends it for: true crime fans, thriller or crime writers
Shelves: criminology
One of the must-reads for research into profiling as a subject, and a look into the earlier days of the BSU / BAU of the FBI.

It took me a little time to get through this book, but any time I delved into it, I got something out of it. John Douglas puts a very personal slant on his work, and opinions - some of which I don't entirely agree with (he spends some time opinionating on the monsters who commit such heinous crimes, and states hs own opinion that he's for the death penalty, supported imme...more
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Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit (Paperback)
Mind Hunter : Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit (Paperback)
Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit (Hardcover)
Mindhunter
Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit (ebook)

John Edward Douglas is a former United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent, one of the first criminal profilers, and criminal psychology author. He also wrote four horror novels in the mid 1990s.

-Wikipedia
More about John E. Douglas...
The Cases That Haunt Us The Anatomy of Motive: The FBI's Legendary Mindhunter Explores the Key to Understanding and Catching Violent Criminals Journey Into Darkness Obsession Inside the Mind of BTK: The True Story Behind the Thirty-Year Hunt for the Notorious Wichita Serial Killer

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“[Talking about Monte Rissell] ...and like Ed Kemper he was able to convince the psychiatrist he was making excellent progress while he was actually killing human beings. This is kind of a sick version of the old joke about how many psychiatrists it takes to change a light bulb. The answer being, just one, but only if the light bulb wants to change.” 2 people liked it
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