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32 reviews for:
Dark Dreams: A Legendary FBI Profiler Examines Homicide and the Criminal Mind
Roy Hazelwood
3.81 AVERAGE
32 reviews for:
Dark Dreams: A Legendary FBI Profiler Examines Homicide and the Criminal Mind
Roy Hazelwood
3.81 AVERAGE
dark
medium-paced
Horrible book that's poorly written and embarrassingly stuck in the past, including pushing the lie that crime was increasing and blaming the cause of violent crime on "relaxed behavioral codes," like body piercings. Happy that this dude's entire body of "work" is finally being dismissed as junk science. Even for a piece of copaganda, this was truly abysmal.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Domestic abuse, Gun violence, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Blood, Kidnapping, Stalking, Murder, Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Cursing, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Forced institutionalization, Alcohol, Classism
challenging
dark
informative
medium-paced
Crisp, organized, and calmly analytical. I had the good fortune to attend a two-day workshop taught by Roy Hazelwood while working in a prison psychiatric hospital, and it was interesting to compare this book with his in-person presentation - this book reads like a much-expanded version of the notes from that training; he presented a lot of the same case histories and research results, but was less dispassionate in person. There aren't very many psychologists or psychiatrists whose contributions to forensic psychology have been as groundbreaking or as useful as those of the FBI's violent criminal profiling unit with their methodical and systematic collection and analysis of volumes of data about the people who commit these kinds of crimes. The books of this author, as well as those of John Douglas and Robert Ressler, are some of the best I could recommend as reading for anyone who wanted examples of how to do this kind of data collection and analysis, what is sometimes called the 'natural experiment', i.e. a study in which the researcher collects information from events with the aim of understanding them, rather than the type of experiment in which the researcher causes events to see what will happen.
dark
informative
sad
medium-paced
challenging
dark
tense
medium-paced
Perhaps I am oversaturated with serial killers and human depravity, as I found most of this book to be lackluster. Maybe I just prefer a deeper dive into an individual, instead of scratching the surface of a wide swath of deviants. The author is clearly an expert in his field, but he comes off as a little too right leaning for me: mentions church a lot, believes piercings and tattoos are precursors to deviance, comes across as a member of the old boy's club. That said, he is intelligent and articulate.
It is disturbing how evil humans can become.
Roy Hazelwood does an excellent job in explaining the how and why behind these sorts of violent crimes. He can be proud of the people he has helped thwart from even more violence with his expertise and knowledge, which is laid out well in these chapters.
Roy Hazelwood does an excellent job in explaining the how and why behind these sorts of violent crimes. He can be proud of the people he has helped thwart from even more violence with his expertise and knowledge, which is laid out well in these chapters.
Awesome book, right up until the epilogue where he blames increasing sexual violence and serial killing on piercings and differing variations of sexual practices. Otherwise, a good read that offers some perspectives on profiling criminal cases.
Heavy, but a fascinating insight into profiling.
Took me a long time to complete this as I sometimes had to pause and take stuff in. This is a very informative book for those who are interested in criminal psychology and profiling.
dark
tense