The Anatomy of Motive; The FBI's Legendary Mindhunter Explores the Key to Understanding and Catching Violent Criminals by Douglas, John, and Olshaker, Mark - 1999

New York: Scribner, 1999. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. 24 cm. 320 pages. Index. Slight wear to rear DJ. Inscribed and signed by both co-authors on the title page. Inscription reads For Henry Stern--with all the best, with sincere best wishes John Douglas. Then signed and dated by Mark Olshaker June, 1999. Another ink notation on fep, not from author. This book analyzes such diverse killers as Lee Harvey Oswald, Theodore Kaczynski, and Timothy McVeigh, and discusses how to anticipate potential violent behavior. John Edward Douglas (born June 18, 1945) is a retired special agent and unit chief in the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He was one of the first criminal profilers and has written books on criminal psychology. Douglas joined the FBI in 1970 and his first assignment was in Detroit, Michigan. In the field, he served as a sniper on the local FBI SWAT team and later became a hostage negotiator. He transferred to the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit (BSU) in 1977 where he taught hostage negotiation and applied criminal psychology at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia to new FBI special agents, field agents, and police officers from all over the United States. He created and managed the FBI's Criminal Profiling Program and was later promoted to unit chief of the Investigative Support Unit, a division of the FBI's National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC). Mark Olshaker (born February 28, 1951) is an American author from Washington, D.C. who frequently collaborates with FBI agent John E. Douglas in writing books about criminal and investigative psychology. In 1995, they formed Mindhunters, Inc. Derived from a Kirkus review: Renowned G-man Douglas, originator of the FBI's Investigative Support Unit, offers his fourth collaboration with co-author Olshaker, 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. 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 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. 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.