The Profiler

My Life Hunting Serial Killers and Psychopaths

De: Pat Brown, Bob A. Andelman

Narrado por: Pat Brown

In 1990, a young woman was strangled on a jogging path near the home of Pat Brown and her family. Brown suspected the young man who was renting a room in her house, and quickly uncovered strong evidence that pointed to him - but the police dismissed her as merely a housewife with an overactive imagination. It would be six years before her former boarder would be brought in for questioning, but the night Brown took action to solve the murder was the beginning of her life's work.

Pat Brown is now one of the nation's few female criminal profilers - a sleuth who assists police departments and victims' families by analyzing both physical and behavioral evidence to make the most scientific determination possible about who committed a crime. Brown has analyzed many dozens of seemingly hopeless cases and brought new investigative avenues to light.

In The Profiler, Brown opens her case files to take listeners behind the scenes of bizarre sex crimes, domestic murders, and mysterious deaths, going face-to-face with killers, rapists, and brutalized victims. It's a rare, up-close, first-person look at the real world of police and profilers as they investigate crimes - the good and bad, the cover-ups and the successes.

©2010 Pat Brown (P)2010 Audible, Inc.

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Pat Brown takes us into the very minds of cold-blooded killers. Most people can't comprehend the `why' behind murder. Pat, utilizing her background as one of the country's leading criminal profilers, coaches the reader as to how a killer thinks, reacts, and kills! Incredible!" (Nancy Grace, host of Nancy Grace on HLN)

Violent Cases

Pat Brown speaks of actual killers and vague law enforcement. Interesting even if I'm not always the conclusion of Profiler in a case.

Good personal biography, however...

This book interested me, but, the mouth sounds were TOO noticeable. I'm not sure if Mrs. Brown was chewing gum, had a mint in her mouth or was sipping a drink every other word, but, the smacking, clicking, etc was too much for me to listen to, so, I had to stop midway thru the book
My BIGGEST peeve for this book was the constant mispronunciation of words like "psychopathy". Even someone like myself, who never attended college, knows it is pronounced "si-KHA-puh-thee" not "siko-PATH-ee".

Good for a first book though. It just needs a better narrator.

bad read

While I enjoyed her stories and the fact that she's a smart lady, she should never have narrated the book herself. She has no dramatic flare in her voice and it's flat and dull. They also did not edit out her mistakes. Meaning: there were a number of times she botched a line, stopped, and began reading from the top. I thought my ipod was screwy the first few times it happened. Besides that it may be a better book to read than listen to.

Pat Brown, Please hire a professional to Narrate.

It is an interesting read, but maybe the book version would be better because Pat Brown does a bad job of narrating it. When I first heard it I thought, "This cannot be a professional narrator, it's probably the author. WHY? Why do you guys do this?"

Long pauses and the same voice for each character make it a rather tedious listen.

SPOILER ALERT START

I have to ask, were there ANY cases where they prosecuted the killer. Understandably this is about profiling and not prosecution but with all the conjecture and theories you get... nothing. Just one case, one. One. One would have been ok, but I would probably then complain 'Only one?'

Besides, this doesn't tell us what makes the serial killers tick. For me it wasn't just prurient interest as in the What they did, but more about the Why. Along those lines I hope Audible will have the books by Dr. Dorothy Otnow Lewis and Dr. Jonathan Pincus some day.

SPOILER ALERT END

It's unfortunate that this book in the end appears to be a memoir of the author--"My Life Hunting Serial Killers and Psychopaths and That's All". If you want to know the WHY as opposed to just the What, then this is not the book for you.

I would give one star but it does have interesting tales and information so it gets two stars.

unbalanced but interesting

Is there anything you would change about this book?

The focus is heavily on failures, but overall, the anecdotes are interesting. Readers must ask why the author doesn't include more cases that were successfully prosecuted.

What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)

The author's rationale for this branch of forensic science is satisfying, underlining the fact that most murders are committed by people who know their victims. If more investigators understood this fact, more murders would be solved. To some extent, Brown indicts law enforcement as inept in collecting, storing, and producing for trial the necessary evidence. Justice is lost somewhere between the crime event and the identification of the perpetrator.

What three words best describe Pat Brown’s performance?

Personal, sobering, revealing.

What else would you have wanted to know about Pat Brown and Bob A. Andelman ’s life?

I would like to know more about Brown's training.

Any additional comments?

This is different from John Douglas's books, in which he tells only about the Bureau's successes. I enjoyed his books, but readers wouldn't guess from reading them that there were any unsolved cases left.