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A review by ridgewaygirl
The Profiler: My Life Hunting Serial Killers and Psychopaths by Pat Brown
2.0
Pat Brown was an ordinary home-schooling stay-at-home mom when a woman was murdered in her neighborhood and just four weeks earlier her family had rented a room to an odd man. Coincidence? She thought not and "investigated" her boarder, bringing the police a box of evidence along with her request that they question him about the murder. The police were strangely unimpressed and declined to follow up. She was surprised, but undaunted. How could it be, she thought, that I can find murderers so much better than the police? Her husband thought she should forget about their now ex-boarder, so she divorced him and carried bravely on. When she discovered that to become the sort of profiler recognized by law enforcement would take too long and involve boring years of work, she taught herself how to profile and set herself up as an Investigative Criminal Profiler. Despite not charging the families of the victims who ask for her help a single dime, not even expenses, she's managed to make a nice living. The key, of course, is television.
The first half also features a little too much information. I'm not sure how the fact that she breastfed each of her children for two years, for example, ties into criminal profiling at all.
The second half of the book is a collection of her accounts of her best work, and where the whole thing breaks down, credibility-wise. Does it not seem odd that when she has her long and illustrious career to look back on, that in all the profiles she put together not one led to an arrest? I may be nit-picking here, but how can she be sure that she's found the true culprit in all of these cases when her conclusions are never tested and the police don't agree with her? She believes that powerful people have vested interests that they're protecting. Maybe, but every time? Also, she admits that she receives very little cooperation from law enforcement and so bases her profiles on much less than an examination of all of the evidence. She does talk to family members and the witnesses willing to talk to her and she does visit crime scenes (thus accounting for the "investigative" in her job title), but often years after the crime. The reader is only privy to her thoughts and reasoning on any case, so it always sounds plausible, but plausible in the way that any viewpoint sounds good when it's the only one you've heard. In high school I had a wacky history teacher who showed us the Zapruder film several times while explaining that Lee Harvey Oswald didn't act alone. We all believed him. We were a group of Canadian high school students who had never given it any thought at all, so we swallowed his point of view. That's what this book felt like. With nothing to judge her conclusions against, they sound perfectly plausible. But if she's so good, shouldn't at least one of her suspects been arrested? Why couldn't she get a single member of law enforcement to believe her?
The first half also features a little too much information. I'm not sure how the fact that she breastfed each of her children for two years, for example, ties into criminal profiling at all.
The second half of the book is a collection of her accounts of her best work, and where the whole thing breaks down, credibility-wise. Does it not seem odd that when she has her long and illustrious career to look back on, that in all the profiles she put together not one led to an arrest? I may be nit-picking here, but how can she be sure that she's found the true culprit in all of these cases when her conclusions are never tested and the police don't agree with her? She believes that powerful people have vested interests that they're protecting. Maybe, but every time? Also, she admits that she receives very little cooperation from law enforcement and so bases her profiles on much less than an examination of all of the evidence. She does talk to family members and the witnesses willing to talk to her and she does visit crime scenes (thus accounting for the "investigative" in her job title), but often years after the crime. The reader is only privy to her thoughts and reasoning on any case, so it always sounds plausible, but plausible in the way that any viewpoint sounds good when it's the only one you've heard. In high school I had a wacky history teacher who showed us the Zapruder film several times while explaining that Lee Harvey Oswald didn't act alone. We all believed him. We were a group of Canadian high school students who had never given it any thought at all, so we swallowed his point of view. That's what this book felt like. With nothing to judge her conclusions against, they sound perfectly plausible. But if she's so good, shouldn't at least one of her suspects been arrested? Why couldn't she get a single member of law enforcement to believe her?