Douglas joined the FBI after studying psychology during his time in the US Air Force. He joined a team in the FBI that travelled the country, and gave lectures and ran courses for local police forces on famous cases, particularly serial killers. Douglas was frustrated doing this, and felt that all the material he was teaching was recycled from other courses and lectures, or from old case notes. On the road, feeling tired of his current material, Douglas took the opportunity to interview a serial killer in a nearby jail (I think Ed Kemper was the first he spoke too - I'll double check) and found the experience enlightening. He then started interviewing killers at every chance he could, and eventually this developed into the science of criminal profiling. Douglas and his team could examine a crime scene, and any evidence, and build an idea of the perpetrators personality.
This book is pretty fascinating. The conclusions Douglas can reach from studying a crime scene appear to be telepathic. There's the easy details, which aren't overly impressive, like age or gender of the killer, but then he can go into some insane detail, such as what colour the killers car is, how old it is and how well maintained it is. It's an interesting concept, and it feels a bit Sherlock Holmes - extrapolating from clues on the crime scene to choose a suspect. Unfortunately, Douglas didn't go into great detail about his craft. He talks us through notable cases and his conclusions on them, and whether or not he was correct in the end (99% of the time he is. Not sure if that is due to only including his successes in the book or if his track record is that good). Douglas tells us the amazing, far fetched predictions he made then expects us to be amazed when they are correct. It's amazing the first time, but 300 pages in it loses its wow factor.
This book could have benefitted from being a bit less about Douglas and a bit more about his methodology. I didn't care about his childhood or the decline of his marriage, I dont really care how he got into the FBI. No one is reading this to learn about his career, Douglas could have taken a step back, but his sizeable ego is apparent throughout this book, as he reels off one successful case after another. Also, there's quite a few times in this book where Douglas airs his pro-death penalty views, which seem a bit outdated.
True crime fans will probably enjoy this book, due to Douglas's extensive interviews with serial killers. All the big names are there - Manson, Kemper and Gein to name a few. The back of the version I had said that the book would revisit Jeffrey Dahmer's case, but unfortunately there was only a sentence or two on Jeff.
Overall this book was pretty interesting. It was intriguing to see how the investigators put together their profiles that led to them catching the killers. It was great to read about some famous cases from someone who worked on them. It was boring to read about some guys start in law enforcement.
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