Tuesday 13 September 2022

Book Review: Criminal Profiling - How Psychological Profiles Help Solve Crime by Brian Innes & Lucy Doncaster (Non-Fiction/True Crime)

Title: Criminal Profiling: How Psychological Profiles Help Solve Crime
Author: Brian Innes & Lucy Doncaster
Publisher: Amber Books
Publication Date: 11 October 2022
Pages: 256
Format: eBook - PDF
Genre: Non-Fiction/True Crime
Source: ARC via NetGalley

Criminal Profiling is a wide-ranging, authoritative history of this fascinating subject, from the first efforts at physical profiling to today's computer-generated geographic mapping techniques.
 
Is there such a thing as a criminal type? Are criminals born genetically predisposed to commit crimes or are they fashioned by their circumstances? Physicians, psychologists, and criminologists have been asking these questions for many centuries without finding a definitive answer. Criminal Profiling is packed with intriguing case histories that demonstrate the variety, sophistication, and effectiveness of this fascinating science. The book includes chapters on the search for the criminal personality, early criminal profiling, and the latest theories of criminality, and features the stories of serial killers Ted Bundy, Peter Sutcliffe, and Andrei Chikatilo, among many others.

 

Criminal Profiling was an interesting read. I liked how it charted the history of the development of the field from the early days to the present, incorporating overviews of real cases along the way. It was nicely presented and illustrated throughout, the images a worthwhile counterpart to the text, which also helped to avoid the book feeling too much of a heavy-going analytical work. As such, I believe it will appeal to both more dedicated students of psychology and also interested laypeople. It gets four stars from me.

I received this book as a free eBook ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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