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Inside the Minds of Mass Murderers: Why They Kill

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Yes, but what actually does go through a murderer's mind in the weeks and days leading up to his (usually his) eventual eruption? This book doesn't provide much enlightenment on that score. It is mostly a cursory summary of a broad range of mass murderers or spree killers.

Part of this book's problem is that it attempts to cover too much ground. It takes in everything from the shooting sprees of a few postal workers, to the Nazi Holocaust. In between those extremes, it also includes cult murders, cult suicides, women with postpartum depression who killed their children, and students who take assault weapons to school. There isn't much that all these murderers have in common, other than perhaps a free-floating sense of disappointment and failure in their lives.

After reading this overview, we are still left with the big question, "Why?" It would perhaps be more revealing to read an in-depth view of a few murders than this abridgment of many.