Customer Reviews

The Profiler: My Life Hunting Serial Killers and Psychopaths

5 star:		(51)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(21)
1 star:		(43)

 

 

I knew nothing about Pat Brown before reading this book. The title piqued my interest because I'm becoming more curious about lies as they pertain to "normal" people in their relationships as well as in criminals.

I found out that Ms. Brown is a bit of a celebrity in the area of criminal profiling. She has made a name for herself because she is on a mission to get a system created whereby various states and counties across the U.S. can "talk" to one another. This way, as criminals migrate from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, they will leave tracks that the law enforcement community can follow. I commend her for this. The best way to make progress happen when facing many roadblocks (funding, attitudes, politics) is to get the media to highlight the need. The more people hear about this need, the more they will be willing to push their local, state, and national governmental to fund the program.

The case files were interesting. I started to understand that, even if a person is murdered and there is strong evidence pointing to a crime, there is no mandate in our legal system requiring "that the person who committed the crime be prosecuted" (p. 196 of advance uncorrected proof). Often the movement of a case is determined by manpower, funding, and the political landscape. At times it was a little discouraging as I realized that, even though our justice system is a decent one, it has much room for improvement. But whether or not it gets the changes necessary depends on funding and politics. In the meantime, justice is not served for many people.

The most sobering cases in "The Profiler" involved two suicides. Brown describes the extreme sorrow, denial, and guilt of those left behind. She states that "Profilers get called in on suicides more than any other kind of death." According to the author, the sad truth is that the police are usually correct in their conclusions regarding suicide cases. I don't think Brown intended them to be, but these two stories were a huge caution for me. I was reminded that I need to be more aware of the subtle clues people leave about their struggles, especially teens and young adults. I don't know if it is because they are able to hide their struggles better, or if adults dismiss their pain because they made it through okay.

I gave the book three stars because the prose meandered a bit, causing the stories to lose focus and forward motion. All in all, "The Profiler" is an interesting & educational read, as long as you can adjust to the writing style.

Readers have made excellent comments on this book, so I won't repeat what everyone has said. I admire her for her entirely self-made career and her insights into cases that were mishandled from the start. I think the most critical point she makes is that early investigators on a crime scene often compose a narrative and then only admit facts into it that backs up the original narrative, dismissing any facts that could lead in a different direction. That's crucial to any investigation. (See Dave Eggers book, the title of which I can't recall, about wrongly imprisoned individuals who were convicted because they "probably" committed the crime. Most of the cases are just egregious. Or read his book Zeitoun, about a man imprisoned and subjected to severe abuse after Hurricane Katrina, when all he had been doing is feeding people's abandoned dogs. Both those books are eye-openers and well written.)

Besides Brown's book being rambling and self-involved, two things struck me. For a person who claims to look only for facts and not theories, I was amazed that she could dismiss the whole subject of learning disabilities as "bunk," without offering any reasons or arguments, as well as decide to home school her children because she found the school system highly objectionable, but again, without offering a single reason for it. But the worst theorizing without facts was her incredible stereotyping of how a male and female spouse would react to their partner's not coming home anywhere near on time. The man would fall asleep, and the woman would hope her partner was dead, because she was going to kill him otherwise. For a person who claims to stick only to facts, she offers here the most stereotyped gender behavior analysis one could think of. If my wife were several hours late coming home one night, falling asleep is the last thing I would do. Brown has has huge blind spots that she either can't see or won't acknowledge, and she shouldn't be making negative comments about how everyone but her had blind spots while investigating a case.

One of the hazards of an autobiography is that even a person who lives an exciting life may not be a good enough writer to transmit that excitement. On the other hand a biography written by a talented author can make even the most average life interesting.

Unfortunately, Pat Brown is not a talented author. Nor does she seem to have lived all that thrilling a life, despite being a self-taught, self-proclaimed profiler. This book consists of her alternately whining and boasting. She is always right, even though no one supports her, believes her or listens to her.

At the beginning of the book, when she is talking about the guy who stayed in her house, she telegraphs several things:
1) this is a woman who will never admit to being wrong
2) this is a woman who doesn't take responsibility for her own failures
3) this book is going to drive a thinking person crazy

She writes about how her husband didn't believe her that her boarder was a criminal and LONG before she mentions that they're now divorced, it's obvious she's going to say so. If she found all the stuff she says she found in this guy's room, the police should clearly have paid attention. But when she starts going into reasons why the case was never properly investigated (later in the book), she begins to give readers the impression that she may have a slight paranoid personality disorder.

The thing I was most hoping to get when I ordered this book was some sense of what an ordinary woman did that helped her to understand the various aspects of profiling. However, since none of Pat Brown's "cases" ever went to court, so that no hard evidence in the cases ever got examined by *actual professionals,* it's hard to take her seriously. Without reading 400 books, I already know more about blood spatter, weapons, physical capability, psychology and psychopathology than she displays. And I'd never expect anyone to hire me on as a profiler.

Skip this.

I couldn't wait to get my hands on this book and was sorely disappointed. Although I applaud Ms. Brown for taking her passion and turning it into a career (although unpaid one), there is something very unsatisfying about this book. I certainly wasn't expecting a literary masterpiece, but the writing is so disjointed and the book didn't flow well and after a while was dry and repetitive. In addition, Ms. Brown comes across as arrogant and self promoting, which I think is how she got the title of an "expert profiler." The cases were interesting but none of them were ever prosecuted and the author's theories as to who did the crime never led to an arrest. I did like her discussion of the weaknesses of the police force and detectives and the politics that sometimes that come into play, but after a while it was like beating a dead horse. We get it - the police force has weaknesses in the profiling department. I don't recommend this particular book as a good one for learning about profiling - I'm still left wondering exactly what a profiler does.

Dear potential reader of this book: Before investing your time and money, ask yourself, "Do I wish to read the slightly paranoid, somewhat delusional, and definitely egotistical blathering of a so-called expert in profiling who never seems to have brought anyone to justice and who has questionable ethics in naming "suspects" that have never been charged, let alone convicted?" If the answer is no, don't buy this book.

How this woman hasn't been sued for slander is beyond me. If she's using pseudonyms, she doesn't say so, although a bit of googling didn't turn up anything under the aliases she may or may not have given. I certainly don't fault her for being self-taught, but she doesn't seem to have actually learned anything more than anyone else who's watched TV, except how to make wild guesses following that ever reliable "gut." And while she doesn't charge victims' families for her opinions, the families would be wise to keep in mind that you get what you pay for. And to any police departments or investigators thinking about hiring her, please ask her about her success rate. Has she ever testified in court? I'd love to know what it is myself. No one would expect a 100% conviction rate, but her's seems to be less than zero.

Unless you want to waste your time and money padding the author's ego and wallet, don't bother.

I read through eight case studies before I gave up on this book. Her alternative "theories of the case" and suspects are interesting and plausible, but she never closed *any* of them. If she had validated some of her profiles by successfully bringing a killer to justice, this book would be credible and impressive. Unfortunately, it's not.

The title of this review reminds me of the [...] slogan, "thread useless without pic." In this case, the profiles are useless without validation.

The Kindle formatting of the book was very good.

When I sat down to read this book, I was looking forward to finding out how a professional profiler works and to see them help bring criminals to justice. This book never quite delivers that.

Pat's life was profoundly affected when a girl was murdered in her town and the signs seemed to point to a boarder in her home. She set about to prove her suspicions to the police, but the boarder was never charged with the crime in spite of seeming very suspicious. Undaunted, she began self-training to be a criminal profiler. At this point of the book, I still had some hope that justice would be done and the girls murderer was uncovered. No such luck. Rather, she used every opportunity smirking at professional profilers and railing at the failed investigators, prosecutors and "the system".

The remainder of the book consists of "cases" that describe various crimes and "non-crimes" (eg suicides). In each case, none of the people she "fingers" as the culprit are charged with the crime. Frequently, she tries to profile cases without the cooperation of the police or even the families involved. In many cases, the cases are extremely old and the evidence isn't made available to her or has been lost or destroyed. She nevertheless manages to find the miscreant and in my opinion, borders on libel by saying that they did the crime without having any evidence to back it up.

When I write a review, I try to be as objective as possible and complete the entire book before beginning my review. About 2/3s of the way through the "cases", I began lamenting my choice of reading material, but still held out hope that she would manage to help obtain at least one conviction. That wasn't the case and as other reviewers have noted, it seemed to be more a case of her puffing up her reputation at the expense of other profilers (real ones who have real training and real convictions).

I first encountered Pat Brown on the Today Show, where she repeatedly offended me with statements profiling a young woman accused of molesting her daughter's friend. Thank goodness I did not connect the person on that she with the author of this book when I started reading it. Instead, I gave this book a good, honest try.

The first chapter was difficult to get through. In fact, I was so not engaged that I attempted 3 times to get started before I actually did. Even after, I continually thought about putting it down again. I plowed through the first few chapters, learning all about her early years, her start in profiling and her ability to seek the truth.

I found her explanations long winded and over explained. But mostly, I read the part about how she breast fed because that's what you do and why would anyone not? It turned me off something awful. To think about all that ego being transferred into my brain was driving me a little crazy, so I put it down and this time, I didn't pick it back up.

Its sad really, I love these kinds of books and am fascinated with profiling.

I found this book very boring ..I'll make a quick comment..not at all factual..written by someone very self serving..egotistical..I couldn't finish it..I got the impression that everyone else is just plain ignorant but the author enough said!

Let me start out by saying I've never written a negative review of a book before in my life. After all, tastes can be subjective, so why ruin the reading experience of someone else who might love a book that didn't exactly send me? However, in the case of The Profiler by Pat Brown, I truly feel I need to warn the public. This book is apallingly BAD. The author is relentlessly egotistical and self-promoting, has NO insight into how vapid she sounds 80% of the time, and on top of that, she's outrageously ungenerous toward experienced, law-enforcement officials who spend their time day-in and day-out in the trenches dodging criminals' bullets instead of on radio and television talk shows! I didn't learn ANYTHING from this book except that Pat Brown has an overwhelming need to become famous. If you want to learn more about sociopathic personality disorder or criminal profiling, please look elsewhere--or better yet, buy a seasoned, big-city street cop a donut and a cup of coffee and truly listen to what he or she has to say. Those people have seen it all and can run circles around wannabes like Pat Brown! And when you're done with your donut and coffee, give the cop a hug and a hearty THANK YOU for doing his/her job without the ridiculous self-absorption of Pat Brown.