BROKEN WINGS

Douglas, the FBI’s famous Mindhunter of Thomas Harris’s novels, has collaborated with Olshaker on four previous nonfiction books about profiling serial killers and other baddies (The Anatomy of a Motive: The FBI’s Legendary Mindhunter Explores the Key to Understanding and Catching Violent Criminals, p. 770, etc.). But the competition they offer isn—t quite serious enough to make Harris fear that one of his characters has returned to a previous life, split into co-authors, and now written his, or their, first Mindhunter novel. Here, Douglas morphs into Jake Donovan, an FBI profiler who is on hand for an Agency attack on right-wingers besieged in a country shack in Wyoming. As with Waco and Ruby Ridge, things go horribly wrong, and Jake is retired from active service by FBI Director Thomas Jefferson Boyd, supposedly for having undermined the organization with an earlier memo he wrote showing how the tragedy could be avoided. It’s clear Jake was right, but he’s sent off to Quantico to teach. Jake’s big dream is to have a specially equipped plane and fly-in team of Mindhunters to track murderers and others when they first strike. But his idea has always been quashed. When Director Boyd is found a suicide, service pistol in hand, Jake’s team goes into action. Harris would never write such dusty stuff as “he always prided himself on his survival skills” or “he . . . removed the business end of the gun from my face.” Even so, Douglas and Olshaker keep the pages burning. (Author tour)