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A review by zade
The Profiler: My Life Hunting Serial Killers and Psychopaths by Pat Brown
3.0
Pat Brown is certainly an interesting person. Once a homeschooling, stay-at-home mom and sign-language interpreter, she shifted paths in her 40s to become a self-taught criminal profiler and is now nationally recognized in her field. Even better, most of her work is for victims and their families and it is *always* pro bono. Her income comes from public appearances and the occasional hire by a defense team. She's the founder of the only non-law-enforcement profiler training program (Excelsior College).
Certainly, within the world of profiling, she's more than a bit of a maverick. She's not at all afraid to criticize the big names from the FBI's ISU, nor is she shy about calling out shoddy police work, whether caused by political motivations, incompetence, or simple ego. I'm pretty sure there are a lot of LEOs who can't stand her. BUT, she backs up her opinions with careful evidence and goes out of her way to give credit to others where it is due. She is clearly frustrated with the law enforcement and justice systems, but rather than attack the whole thing, she's looking for ways to make it better.
Brown's personal story is, surprisingly, the most interesting part of the book. Generally, one reads these books for puzzles solved and bad guys caught. In Brown's case, the crime stories she tells are, to a one, unsolved to this day. She gives good explanations of her conclusions for the cases, but apparently has very little luck in getting those in charge of investigating to follow up on her suggestions. Granted, she states at the beginning that she does not include many cases she has worked because doing could hurt ongoing investigations or prosecutions or because she has signed nondisclosure agreements with the law enforcement agencies involved. Nonetheless, the cases she presents end up being extremely frustrating in that the reader has no way to judge if she was right, if the investigators were truly being unreasonable in ignoring her, or if she's not as good as she says.
Regardless of how the reader ends up seeing her professionally, there is no doubt that she is a woman on a mission to reform the way crime investigations are handled and, as a result, to make people safer. Her determination, her ability to teach herself what she needed to know, and her reinvention of herself at an age when many people are settling comfortably into their ruts, make her a fascinating person.
Certainly, within the world of profiling, she's more than a bit of a maverick. She's not at all afraid to criticize the big names from the FBI's ISU, nor is she shy about calling out shoddy police work, whether caused by political motivations, incompetence, or simple ego. I'm pretty sure there are a lot of LEOs who can't stand her. BUT, she backs up her opinions with careful evidence and goes out of her way to give credit to others where it is due. She is clearly frustrated with the law enforcement and justice systems, but rather than attack the whole thing, she's looking for ways to make it better.
Brown's personal story is, surprisingly, the most interesting part of the book. Generally, one reads these books for puzzles solved and bad guys caught. In Brown's case, the crime stories she tells are, to a one, unsolved to this day. She gives good explanations of her conclusions for the cases, but apparently has very little luck in getting those in charge of investigating to follow up on her suggestions. Granted, she states at the beginning that she does not include many cases she has worked because doing could hurt ongoing investigations or prosecutions or because she has signed nondisclosure agreements with the law enforcement agencies involved. Nonetheless, the cases she presents end up being extremely frustrating in that the reader has no way to judge if she was right, if the investigators were truly being unreasonable in ignoring her, or if she's not as good as she says.
Regardless of how the reader ends up seeing her professionally, there is no doubt that she is a woman on a mission to reform the way crime investigations are handled and, as a result, to make people safer. Her determination, her ability to teach herself what she needed to know, and her reinvention of herself at an age when many people are settling comfortably into their ruts, make her a fascinating person.