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The Anatomy of Motive : The FBI's Legendary Mindhunter Explores the Key to Understanding and Catching Violent Criminals | 
 enlarge | Authors: John Douglas, Mark Olshaker
Publisher: Pocket
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
Buy Used: $1.92
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Avg. Customer Rating:  62 reviews
Sales Rank: 32298
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 432
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 6.4 x 4.2 x 1.3
ISBN: 0671023934
Dewey Decimal Number: 364.150973
EAN: 9780671023935
ASIN: 0671023934
Publication Date: July 1, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: Standard used condition.
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Amazon.com
What makes people kill? Specifically, what are the motivations behind serial, mass, and spree killings? Drawing from cases such as the mass murder in Dunblane, Scotland, in which a lone gunman mowed down 16 children and their teacher, the still-unsolved Tylenol poisonings, and the Unabomber, former FBI profiler John Douglas and coauthor Mark Olshaker try to explain the unthinkable. What sets The Anatomy of Motive apart from so many of the theories about these horrific acts of violence is that Douglas and Olshaker have no obvious political agenda. They don't look for easy answers and they don't provide easy solutions. They do, however, offer some insight into the twisted kind of thinking that can lead a person to believe that the solution to his problems lies in bloodshed. They also provide some danger signs that may help to identify the potentially violent criminal before he has a chance to act out his morbid fantasies. While The Anatomy of Motive is undeniably horrifying, it is also illuminating, and Douglas and Olshaker approach their topic with grace and insight. --Lisa Higgins
Product Description
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 minds 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, Theodore Kaczynski, and Timothy McVeigh is gripping, but more importantly, helps us learn how to anticipate potential violent behavior before it's too late.
Download Description
In this eagerly anticipated paperback release from the international bestselling authors of Mindhunter, legendary crime fighter John Douglas explores the root of all crime -- motive. Every crime is a mystery story with a motive at its heart. Understand the motive and you can solve the mystery. Here, Douglas offers a dramatic, insightful look at the development and evolution of the criminal mind.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 57 more reviews...
Well Done December 19, 2007
Though repetitious in some parts (if you have read the author's other books), it is well put together and informative. Another job well done.
 Inside Smoldering Minds September 4, 2006
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is an engrossing book that was ahead of its time in presenting the often seamy, often searching field of forensic science. Douglas brings us onto the crime scene, and gives us a view through the eyes of profilers, pathologists, analyzers, and detectives.
The only fault I find with the book is its general contention that criminals choose their behavior. Without rehashing the nature vs. nurture controversy too much, a consideration of some of the possible physiological factors influencing criminals might have led to a more three-dimensional view of the criminal mind.
Douglas uses the fact that an offender can almost always restrain himself from committing a crime while a policeman is watching him as proof that virtually all criminal behavior is under the individual's control. I can't help but think though of the somewhat parallel condition of people with disorders such as Tourette's Syndrome. Tourette's sufferers can at times reduce or even eliminate their ticcing behavior when they are briefly in public. But their tics will return all the more insistently when they are alone again. So a criminal's ability to briefly control himself isn't necessarily an indication that he can always control himself.
A compulsive element seems to be especially apparent in crimes such as arson, which Douglas is often at his best discussing. He links this crime to a desire to command and manipulate. The arsonist gets the satisfaction of watching a whole slew of people, firemen and victims alike, scurrying around as a result of the problem he has created.
However, as Douglas himself reveals, there is also often some physically-rooted obsession that goads pyromaniacs. Douglas presents the case of Peter George Dinsdale in England for instance. This man was an epileptic who would set fires after he experienced a tingling in his fingers followed by some triggering, often trivial, altercation with his victims. This description also left me wondering if the flickering of flames might produce a more markedly pleasurable, fixating trance-like state in some people than in others.
A variety of criminal acts that Douglas describes center around fetishes and fanaticisms that might similarly have some neurological quirk as their basis.
Overall though, Douglas does a fine job of putting his readers on the trail of the criminal. He brings Sherlock Holmes onto current crime scenes by illustrating how a forensic scientist's work boils down to details - attention to details. He cites the case of arson in which a Torah was purposefully burned from right to left - cluing the detectives into the fact that the perpetrator must have been someone with a knowledge of Hebrew.
And like Holmes' classic clue of the dog that didn't bark, Douglas alerts us to the importance of details that are not there. Such observations are often important in insurance cases. When someone burns his own property for money, he will often remove items of special sentimental value first. If there are no family photo albums left in the ashes - that's a clue.
This book reminds us that no detail is trivial or uninteresting. Any mote might have a story to tell. If we could approach life from the viewpoint of the forensic scientists in these pages - we would never be bored.
A trip to a very dark place March 17, 2006
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
When it comes to bringing serial crime psychology and profiling to a level that a layperson can understand, Douglas is peerless. He identifies several different types of serial killers and includes true-life stories of a few he's dealt with in his decades with the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit. It's an engrossing, easily understandable and fascinating read.
Not as riveting as I expected February 3, 2006
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
When I saw this book in a used book store, I thought the title was "Anatomy of Murder". Only later did I see that it was "Motive". Based on Douglas' other books about serial killers, I expected this book to deal strictly with serial killers. And it did not.
Douglas' book described a range of killers; and his chapters are broken down accordingly. There are chapters on the anatomy of arsonists; people who use guns to commit crimes; those who poison and why; and other chapters ranging from guys who simply snap to those who commit random violence.
I wasn't really interested in serial arsonists so I skipped that chapter. The rest of the book was interesting but I think the chapters would have been much better if Douglas had focused on one or two specific cases rather than telling us snippets of several cases.
Would I read this book again? Probably not. Several of his other books are better.
 The Best in the Series September 18, 2005
3 out of 7 found this review helpful
Real info and facts on serial killers. The behind the scenes look at the killers that we don't get from the news. An excellent and well-written book. Also check out Robert Ressler's books.
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