The Killer Across the Table: Unlocking the Secrets of Serial Killers and Predators with the FBI’s Original Mindhunter by John E. Douglas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is my second book by Douglas, Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit being the first. If I remember correctly, my biggest issue with Mindhunter the impression I got of John Douglas as a human being: sexist and egotistical. I didn’t get that impression with this one.
Maybe because this book is much more recent? I don’t know but it was fascinating to get inside the heads of these killers. I occasionally got frustrated by the jumping back and forth between the current killer being discussed and some other one who the author(s) wanted to compare him to. The narration (done by the actor who plays the John Douglas-esque character on the Netflix show) was sometimes slow and the inflections he used to denote something that must have been italicized or in some other way set apart in the written text were halting. Even though I understood the reasoning behind the change, it was still annoying.
This is a book I’d definitely recommend to any true crime buff. I hadn’t heard of many of the killers discussed and was mostly riveted throughout the book.