Indeed, Douglas’s advocacy of awareness and observation, combined with his chilling accounts of criminal motivation, offer a...
Renowned G-man Douglas, originator of the FBI’s Investigative Support Unit, offers his fourth collaboration with co-author Olshaker (Obsession, 1998, etc.), a dense admixture of profiling theory, grim criminal history and cautionary admonishment that, though at times unwieldy, adds up to an informative, provocative page-turner.
As fans of Thomas Harris’s novels know, Douglas’s essential thesis is that even the most violent antisocial deeds contain signature elements (as distinct from modus operandi) that allow investigators to construct the framework of what he calls that key question: Why do criminals commit the crimes they do? This technique creates the profile of an unknown suspect that often aids investigations with startling accuracy. Douglas recaps this theory more than is necessary. Fortunately, he also illustrates it with a plethora of actual cases, assembling quite a rogues” gallery: obscure serial arsonists, snipers, and spree killers, along with such media demons as Timothy McVeigh, Andrew Cunanan, and Theodore Kaczynski. Douglas is a good teller of gruesome tales, although he undermines his own insights by referring to his prey as pathetic and with sarcastic asides. The book’s strength is its arsenal of details and insider knowledge: we learn, for example, the profiler’s homicidal triad of early indicators for potential offenders; that the most violent crimes stem from a relatively small population of antisocial loners who are almost always straight white males under 50; and that such figures may be set off by a single dislocating event, often a workplace downsizing. Readers in such diverse fields as human resources and journalism may thus find this thriller to be quite useful.
Indeed, Douglas’s advocacy of awareness and observation, combined with his chilling accounts of criminal motivation, offer a valuable lesson to all in staying abreast of the unlikely but most lethal dangers of our society.Pub Date: June 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-684-84598-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1999
A fast-paced reconstruction of the five-year crime spree of Cleveland serial rapist Ronnie Shelton and the case that put him behind bars. Neff (Ohio State Univ. School of Journalism; Mobbed Up, not reviewed) certainly avoids the journalistic excesses of the true- crime genre. He gathered documents ranging from private diaries to psychiatric evaluations as well as interviews to reconstruct the plentiful dialogue and interior monologue that advancs the story. He also gained Shelton's cooperation, so he's able dramatically to portray some of the rapist's life and thought. Neff writes in brief scenes: he cuts from women being raped in their homes to the rapist's childhood as a peeping Tom and a victim of physical abuse from his parents, to Shelton's adult life: at a nightclub, a wiry man with long, rock-star hair, fighting to protect a woman menaced by her boyfriend. Maybe, he thinks, he should become a cop to earn the respect of a father who had always thought him a sissy. Neff tries unsuccessfully to make drama out of the police on the case. Better is his focus on Shelton's many victims, fighting the lingering psychological horrors of the crime that has been called ``unfinished murder.'' Finally, the cops got a break, tipped to Shelton by a vague photo of his car taken by a surveillance camera at a bank where his used a victim's ATM card. Despite the testimony of Shelton's psychiatrist that he couldn't help himself, the young man was found guilty of 49 rapes and sentenced to 3,198 years imprisonment. In an epilogue, Neff recounts how he learned that many of the victims ``bonded into a remarkable sisterhood of strength'' and offers some more analysis of Shelton's twisted psyche, although he acknowledges, ``I cannot say for certain why he turned out the way he did.'' Competent and thorough—so thorough, in fact, that local color overwhelms any inquiry into the broader issues raised by Shelton's case.
Pub Date: April 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-671-73185-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A ringing, persuasive call for injecting moral considerations- -both personal and political— into the often self-oriented world of psychotherapy. A psychologist who is director of family therapy at the Univ. of Minnesota and coauthor of Medical Family Therapy (not reviewed), Doherty rightly decries the fact that therapists tend to be ``more comfortable with the language of techniques than with the language of morality.'' He advocates that clinicians help their clients not only to achieve greater self-fulfillment but to become sensitive to interpersonal ethics—such as commitment to relationships and the need for just behavior and truthfulness in those relationships. Similarly, while mental health professionals sometimes reduce clients' communal and political activism to an escape from emotional problems, Doherty asks, ``Are we helping clients create psychological cocoons for themselves at the expense of their communities?'' Along with such contemporary communitarian thinkers as Amitai Etzioni and Mary Ann Glendon, he extols engagement in larger societal concerns as beneficial for individual psychic health as well as for the common weal. Doherty concludes with short sections on how the therapist might strive towards a moral practice, exploring such concepts as personal courage (i.e., in clinical interventions). His final short, helpful section tells how to find a morally good therapist. Doherty's approach is balanced, for he does not believe that therapists should be ethically prescriptive but that they should serve as ``moral consultants.'' Still, once or twice, Doherty goes too far, as when he relates giving a client her senator's phone number when she raises concerns about US policy during the Gulf War. And his chapter on prudence (in interpretations or other interventions) seems less about morality than about good clinical practice. Overall, a finely nuanced, beautifully written work, one that is rich in case studies and should help clinicians and patients alike to move therapy beyond the morally sterile culture of narcissism in which it's too often stuck.
Pub Date: April 26, 1995
ISBN: 0-465-02068-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
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