Anatomy of Motive: The FBI's Legendary Mindhunter Explores the Key to Understanding and Catching Violent Criminals FROM OUR EDITORS
The Barnes & Noble Review
Every crime is a mystery story with a motive at its heart. Understand the motive, and you can solve the mystery. In The Anatomy of Motive — the eagerly anticipated book from the international bestselling authors of Mindhunter, Journey into Darkness, and Obsession — legendary FBI agent John Douglas explores the development and evolution of the criminal mind.
From seemingly ordinary men who suddenly kill their families to dedicated murderers who embark on serial-killing sprees, Douglas helps readers understand what precipitates violent sociopathic behavior. He shows how criminals use and react to the media and how the motives behind hijacking and terrorism evolved through history.
Douglas identifies the common precursors to the violent antisocial personality, revealing the astonishing similarities and differences among various types of offenders, including arsonists, hijackers, bombers, poisoners, and serial and mass murderers. He also profiles notorious assassins — Lee Harvey Oswald, Theodore Kaczynski, and Timothy McVeigh — examining that select personality and how it applies to the particular type of crime.
As Douglas explained in an earlier chat on barnesandnoble.com regarding his grisly career, "I was always interested in why criminals particularly do the things that they do. In simple language, what was their motivation, how did they perpetrate the crime, and particularly, why did they perpetrate the crime? I found myself in prisons asking those questions of murderers, rapists, and child molesters. What was surprising tomewas that many people working in the mental-health profession never concern themselves or want to know the answers to those questions.... This has been my obsession and my mission, to try to change the way people look at and treat violent offenders." With The Anatomy of Motive, Douglas advances this mission, and the book's profiles and observations provide a framework to help us anticipate potential violent behavior before it's too late.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
From legendary FBI profiler John Douglas and Mark Olshaker—authors of the nonfiction international bestsellers Mindhunter, Journey into Darkness, and Obsession—comes an unprecedented, insightful look at the root of all crime.
Every crime is a mystery story with a motive at its heart. With the brilliant insight he brought to his renowned work inside the FBI's elite serial-crime unit, John Douglas pieces together motives behind violent sociopathic behavior. He not only takes us into the darkest recesses of the midns of arsonists, hijackers, bombers, poisoners, assassins, serial killers, and mass murderers, but also the seemingly ordinary people who suddenly kill their families or go on a rampage in the workplace.
Douglas identifies the antisocial personality, showing surprising similarities and differences among various types of deadly offenders. He also tracks the progressive escalation of those criminals' sociopathic behavior. His analysis of such diverse killers as Lee Harvey Oswald, Theordore Kaczynski, and Timothy McVeigh is gripping, but more importantly, helps us learn how to anticipate potential violent bahavior before it's too late.
FROM THE CRITICS
Liz Smith - New York Post
A marvelous, thrilling, chilling, and riveting read.
Publishers Weekly
A volume of case studies by Douglas, the former chief profiler at the FBI's legendary behavioral sciences unit, and Olshaker has become an annual event, from 1995's Mind Hunter to last year's Obsession. Here, the duo exhume the victims of Andrew Cunanan, Charles Whitman, Theodore Kaczynski and many others for insight into the killers' minds. Douglas's formula is deceptively simple: "WHY? + HOW? = WHO." But since serial killers are rarely caught through profiling, the formula is better expressed as "WHO + HOW = WHY." Douglas is tops in the field. He was among the first to suggest that the Atlanta child murderer was African-American, and he delivered a dead-on profile of Scottish mass-murderer Thomas Watt Hamilton on live TV based on preliminary news accounts. Still, most of what's here will be familiar to readers of other profiling books: the lonely white male with an obsessive sense of his own failure who tortured animals, wet his bed and played with matches as a child. Though Douglas promises to explain the differences among bombers, arsonists, shooters, cutters and stranglers, his profiles too often cleave to predictable, reductive formulations. Both Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby are characterized as "paranoid losers"; Timothy McVeigh is "a scrawny, pissed-off young hick." As always, Douglas and Olshaker deliver an entertaining read, but fewer case studies presented with more depth would better inform and educate the amateur profiler. (June) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
The team that brought you Mindhunter and other best sellers on tracking criminals is back with more.
Mary Grace Butler - The New York Times Book Review
This is not a book to read at home alone, but it offers interesting, if depressing, insights into the psychology of deadly behavior.
Biography
...[L]aced with compelling stories and detailed mini-portraits....Impeccably researched and brimming with information...Read all 6 "From The Critics" >
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING
"The Anatomy of Motive finds John Douglas at the top of his form -- as always. This is a terrific book for true crime and mystery lovers alike."
--James Patterson
— James Patterson
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