I love to watch all those Crime Scene Investigation Programs on television. They always seems to bring us a piece of the day to day investigation life of a detective, trying to solve a mysterious murder. And sometimes, like magic, they solve the most difficult cases based not only on forensic but also on intuition or other supernatural feelings... But Hollywood is one thing and real life is a complete different ballgame.
The authors did a magnificent job demystifying the field of profilers, stating clearly that this is not suppose to be the art of divination, but a real reasoning subject based on scientific methods and analysis of psychological/psychopathic minds of the suspects. As Thomas Edison would say, "1% inspiration and 99% perspiration" (he was referring to geniality, but we can apply this idea to profiling without fearing of the quote being misused).
Giving a brief history on how she became directly involved with this field, Pat Brown tells the readers some of her cases (the ones that she can talk about) and all the sequence of her reasoning for reaching her conclusions. And we notice that she take her job seriously and with passion and that makes all the difference when you are dealing with some of the most horrific atrocities committed by a human being against another human being.
She goes deep in analysing ten cases, providing all details that composed each one of those cases. And one of her quotes is really good: "While anything is possible, everything is not probable". I would add to this quote the famous Occam's Razor "The simplest explanation is usually the correct one" and there you go!
I would recommend this book to any serious reader who likes a good reasoning book. This book deserves to be in a permanet library to any reader who thinks he is a sleeping profiler ready to wake up, learn and go to action.

This book was written by Pat Brown with Bob Andelman in 2010, published by Hyperion Books and distributed by HarperCollins, who were kind enough to send me a copy for reviewing. ( )

Terrible. ( )

I picked up this book thinking it would be a scientific discourse on criminal profiling. What I got instead was a self-congratulatory auto-biography. Apparently, the authoress is smarter than the entire U.S. legal system as well as every learning institution which offers criminal studies.

Before I read this book, I had no idea every criminal or potential criminal was a psychopath. I also did not know that every police officer was corrupt. The "self-taught" authoress makes sure we receive the benefit of her knowledge, and drums these facts into our heads. (I wish she had self-taught herself to write grammatically correct, as well as the virtues of not repeating herself several times in a single paragraph).

The book is supposed to be an attempt to show us how a criminal profiler works, and creates profiles from crime scenes. The book is really about a woman (who, again, is smarter than actual detectives) who never actually sees a crime scene, picks her favorite suspect, and forces the facts to fit her theory as to why this person is the guilty party.

All in all, I would NOT recommend this book, as it is written by the Uri Geller of criminal profilers. ( )

The Profiler had some interesting material, but at least as an audiobook it dragged. She seemed to repeat herself and not add enough details to hold my interest fully. ( )

I didn't like this book. Too much background about the author's life, lots of circumstantial evidence that "proves" the cases, and not a single of the profiled "killers" found guilty.

This book seems very one-sided: the author can see what others can't, and is apparently always right even though there are no convictions. It would read a lot better with a more neutral tone, and less focus on the author's family life.

The main thing I got out of this book was that some US prosecutors can decide to drop cases or not pursue avenues for political reasons. If what's said in the book is true, some of the prosecutor's actions are quite scandalous.

If you're looking for insights into scientific profiling, I don't think this is the book for you. ( )