PROFILES IN MURDER An FBI Legend Dissects Killers and Their Crimes

Vorpagel is an expert from the FBI Behavioral Science Profiling Unit, which developed the technique of creating psychological profiles of serial killers. The book's structure replicates a course taught by Vorpagel to law enforcement professionals, replete with graphic examples from his career, but it is written in a style clearly meant to appeal to the lay reader. Contains an index but no bibliography. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

At FBI headquarters during the 1970s, Vorpagel, Ressler and other members of the Behavioral Science Unit formalized their techniques of profiling serial killers, an approach to criminology brought to public attention through Thomas Harris's 1988 bestseller, The Silence of the Lambs, and Jonathan Demme's 1991 Oscar-winning film adaptation. Using the analysis of a crime scene, a profiler tries to predict a murderer's mind-set, habits, background and appearance. When the Behavioral Science Unit was created, the FBI set out to establish patterns by studying as many mass murderers, bombers, rapists and serial killers as possible; hundreds of case histories were established through interviews, many conducted by Vorpagel, who looked into fantasies, family, sex, work, fears, goals and other aspects until "a pattern began to emerge in the personality of a crime and its scene." For many years, on assignment with the FBI, Vorpagel taught his techniques in police academies and military armories nationwide. Told in the third person and padded with pages of dialogue in an attempt to duplicate instructor-student interaction, this is largely a re-creation of past cases with only a superficial skim of the history and inner workings of the Behavioral Science Unit. The result often comes across like fiction (or a pitch for a hoped-for TV series), which undercuts credibility to a degree. Although the book does offer case histories not found elsewhere, readers looking for the sort of insights into twisted criminal minds revealed by John E. Douglas and Mark Olshaker in their recent Obsession will be disappointed. Photos.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Readers who like true-crime books written in the clipped, manly-to-a-fault style will enjoy Vorpagel and Harrington's rousing account of the former's career as FBI criminal profiler par excellence. By now, most citizens, not just most true-crime fans, know that guys like Vorpagel attempt to identify malefactors by extrapolating their psychological profiles. Once a perpetrator is fully understood, identification and incarceration will, theoretically, fall into place. Of course, with law enforcement memoirs, as with others, it is sometimes wise to leave an element of disbelief unsuspended: in one lengthy vignette, Rastafarians ("Rastis" --not Rastas--to Vorpagel) plot violence against Vorpagel because "he's white. Because he's a policeman. Because he's American. Because he's here." The bloodthirsty "ultraextremists" mix the Old Testament, voodoo, and dope in an evil stew they vengefully slop toward "Babylon" and its white proprietors--yikes! This is rip-roaring biography that reads like fiction, in which even the profiling content is well-developed and enhances the murky, X-Files-ish aura of big-time psychological sleuthing. Mike Tribby