Customer Reviews

Profiles in Murder: An FBI Legend Dissects Killers and Their Crimes

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

As a student of forensic psychology I found the content informative, fascinating, and a great take-off point for further research and study. However, I must take GREAT issue with the manner in which this book was authored. Apparently an editor's pen has never been set to this manuscript in that it was one of the most poorly written books I have ever had to fight through. Replete with spelling and grammatical errors, confusing and clumsy fake-verbatim dialogue, I found the writing obscured the subject more than illuminated it. All in all, this is an annoying, rambling and tangential third-person account of what should have been an exciting, concise first-person narrative. My advice: Read it for the information, but if ever you need a ghost writer yourself, avoid the one chosen by Mr. Vorpagel.

This is one of the best profiling books I have read. It doesn't focus so much on the profiler's life as it does on actual case history, which is what I prefer. I never got bored with this one as I have with others that tend to focus on the feelings and sometimes the professional jelousies between the FBI profilers. I would love to read another book of case stories by this team.

In this engrossing book Russell Vorpagel instructs a class in death investigation. He uses some known (and some no-so-known) cases to teach his class (and the reader) about some of the intricacies of death investigation, which include critical thinking in solving cases in profiling. One of the major strengths of this book is Vorpagel's use of a myriad of cases to demonstrate his points. His instruction to his class followed by a case study demonstrates his points in full detail. This book is "must read" for anyone interested in death investigation and profiling.

A very interesting look at the way a profiler creates his profiles of murderers and other criminals (most of whom seem to be mentally-ill). There are a number of spelling, grammatical, and other editing errors that sometimes make it confusing or hard-to-read. In a book produced by a publisher known for its scientific titles, I expected more care.

While reading this book I had mixed emotions,(kinda like watching your mother-in-law drive off a cliff in your new Mercedes). To begin with, I loved certain aspects of this book. On the other hand, the editing was horrid! This book leaves no doubt about the expertise of Mr. Vorpagel's knowledge and ability as a criminal profiler and it is written in a unique format. It is presented as if Mr. Vorpagel is teaching a "light" course on criminal profiling to a class of 28 students, however, he only designates 4 class members as actual participants that he communicates with in a question and answer forum that encompasses a two-week long course. He picks two women and two men. The first woman is Asian, a public defender from Fresno; the second, a Latino,
works with the California Dept. of Corrections. The first man, described as pale-faced, is with the Sacramento District Attorney's Office; and finally, a young African-American patrolman from San Francisco. I assume he presents it in this manner to keep the confusion to a minimum. For the most part, it works, but I would still get confused from time to time, as to who was doing the talking. I attribute this to poor writing. Another plus in dealing with a small group of people is that you get to know the varied personalities and you feel like you are part of the class.

Another thing I liked about the presentation was that Mr. Vorpagel teaches by example. I found this to be a very precise way to make his points and he took them case-by-case, one at a time. In this way, I felt that I came away from each example with the maximum amount of knowledge, understanding and retention. It also made the reading much more exciting and the book much harder to put down.

As I mentioned, there are some flaws in this book, and a few are glaring, but in the overall picture, the "good" outweighs the "bad" and I would still highly recommend it. I know that I learned a great deal from reading it.

This book is very easy to read, I couldn't put it down (I read it in 4 hours).Very useful to public defenders, prosecutors, investigative officers, coroners, psychologists, etc. It gives a view of death investigations (forensics) as an art and not a science. The author takes you step by step through crime scenes depicting details that are gruesome and not for someone with a weak stomach. Overall, the author is very good and almost feels as if you are watching a horror movie. I recommend this book to anyone who works with death scenes, criminals and law enforcement.

I believe I've read all the books by Douglas, Ressler, and all the others writing about psychological profiling, yet I still found this an absorbing and fascinating book. Vorpagel presents a number of cases in which the crime scene is not always what it appears to be, and the unexpected (but plausible) explanations are more surprising than the rabbit-out-of-the-hat endings of 99.9% of crime fiction. The story of the training exercise in Chapter 7 alone is worth the price of the book. Highly recommended.

This book started out with what I found kind of a stagey premise....with Vorpagel "teaching" a class of profiling students. There were some moments of interesting reading, but suddenly, in the final quarter of the book, Vorpagel and Harrington suddenly veered directly off the track of murder and profiling and went into two incredibly boring stories that had nothing to do with profiling at all. I'm beginning to wonder if anything is being written anymore, as far as forensic profiling, that says anything new. And I am also puzzled by the sheer number of these books lately that have veered far afield of their supposed topics. I found this a VERY average book.

This ghostwritten book uses a stagey narrative device: it consists of direct quotes of Russell Vorpagel, the "author", and students in his criminology class. The result is contrived and non-believable.

Chapter 3, for example, begins with an alleged verbatim transcript of a classroom exchange:

"'The Richard Trenton Chase case,' Vorpagel [the author] said, 'went a long way in establishing the credibility of profiling.'

Gary [a student] said, 'That's the first time I've heard of a real vampire case."

'They are rare. Yet, at almost the same time as the Chase case, another man with bloody habits was captured."

'Another vampire?' Marcus [another student] asked.

'A joker name Crutchley started a rampage in West Virginia that ended in Florida. etc. etc.'"

Come on. Was the ghostwriter taping hours, days and weeks of classroom exchanges between Vorpagel and his students, then transcribing him for this book? I don't think so. This narrative device is supposed to convey a feeling of authenticity, but it comes across as phony as a three-dollar bill.

Moreover, the book is not a thoughtful summary of the science of criminal profiling. It's a series of bloody stories of heinous crimes. If that's what you want to read, fine. If you want significant insights into the purported subject of the book, forget it.

If you are interested in the whys and hows here it is. When this man decided to put pen to paper he decided to let us into the deserted corridors of the killers mind. Upfront, in your face, and right on the mark. If this is the first book you buy on this subject than you are starting with the best.