The legendary Mindhunter takes us behind the scenes of some of his most gruesome, intriguing and challenging cases – and into the darkest places of our worst nightmares.

During his 25-year career with the Investigative Support Unit, Special Agent John Douglas has become a legendary figure in law enforcement, pursuing some of the most notorious and brutal serial killers. In our time: the recreational prostitute hunter in the Alaskan jungle, the Atlanta child killer, and the Green River killer in Seattle, a case that nearly cost Douglas his life. .

As the role model for Jack Crawford in The Silence of the Lambs, Douglas has faced, interviewed, and researched numerous serial killers and assassins, including Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, and Ed Gein, who took the helm. the victim’s skin. Using his uncanny ability to be both predator and prey, Douglas examines each crime scene, reliving the actions of the killer and victim in his mind, creating profiles, describing their habits and predicting their next moves.

This is Douglas’ original book about becoming an FBI profiler; he was the basis for Scott Glenn’s character in The Silence of the Lambs and the inspiration for the name-changed main character in Netflix’s Mindhunter series. Per Douglas’ memoir, he was interested in the psychology of people from his teens, and was studying industrial psychology when he was recruited by the FBI; one of a group of men (no women FBI agents back then, per J. Edgar Hoover) who pioneered the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit (the BAU portrayed in the series CRIMINAL MINDS), the people who examine the evidence, try to figure out the motives, and finally draw conclusions about the perpetrator of a crime.

The first part of the book discusses Douglas’s life and the early portion of his career, where he discusses some of the criminals he interviewed to develop a systematic approach to profiling, like Ed Kemper, an otherwise affable man who murdered young women as well as his own mother; Charles Manson, who needed to be in control of his followers; and rapist and murderer Richard Speck. The second half of the book talks about the cases he worked on with the BAU and how they reached the conclusions they did about the suspects and how they went about assisting the local police in finding the perpetrators. Several times, as he reluctantly relates, no justice could be found.

• Mindhunter

• Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit
• By: John E. Douglas, Mark Olshaker