The Anatomy of Motive: The FBI’s Legendary Mindhunter Explores the Key to Understanding and Catching Violent Criminals

The Barnes & Noble Review Every crime is a mystery story with a motive at its heart. Understand the motive, and you can solve the mystery. In The Anatomy of Motive — the eagerly anticipated book from the international bestselling authors of Mindhunter, Journey into Darkness, and Obsession — legendary FBI agent John Douglas explores the development and evolution of the criminal mind. From seemingly ordinary men who suddenly kill their families to dedicated murderers who embark on serial-killing sprees, Douglas helps readers understand what precipitates violent sociopathic behavior. He shows how criminals use and react to the media and how the motives behind hijacking and terrorism evolved through history. Douglas identifies the common precursors to the violent antisocial personality, revealing the astonishing similarities and differences among various types of offenders, including arsonists, hijackers, bombers, poisoners, and serial and mass murderers. He also profiles notorious assassins — Lee Harvey Oswald, Theodore Kaczynski, and Timothy McVeigh — examining that select personality and how it applies to the particular type of crime. As Douglas explained in an earlier chat on barnesandnoble.com regarding his grisly career, “I was always interested in why criminals particularly do the things that they do. In simple language, what was their motivation, how did they perpetrate the crime, and particularly, why did they perpetrate the crime? I found myself in prisons asking those questions of murderers, rapists, and child molesters. What was surprising tomewas that many people working in the mental-health profession never concern themselves or want to know the answers to those questions…. This has been my obsession and my mission, to try to change the way people look at and treat violent offenders.” With The Anatomy of Motive, Douglas advances this mission, and the book’s profiles and observations provide a framework to help us anticipate potential violent behavior before it’s too late.