Review: The Anatomy of Motive

As promised in my recent list of favorite true crime books, I've just wrapped up The Anatomy of Motive by John Douglas. If you're not familiar with Douglas, he was part of the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Unit for 25 years as a leading expert on criminal personalities and profiling, so his thoughts on criminals are well worth reading if you're interested in the psychology of crime.

I've read several of this books at this point, and can particularly recommend Mindhunter (yes, the one that inspired the Netflix series, which I also recommend) and The Cases That Haunt Us. This one fit nicely in with the others, and really delved deeply into the psychology of why which, as he points out, is what we all want to know anyway.

The Unabomber
forensic sketch

He discusses some famous cases you might expect, including Lee Harvey Oswald, Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber), and Timothy McVeigh. Incidentally, he has a whole book dedicated to the Unabomber that I really want to read now. I am guessing these cases are probably at least minimally familiar to just about anyone who would pick up this book in the first place, but he also goes beyond what the average person probably knows. He covered more/different details than I was primarily familiar with, anyway. Even with Lee Harvey Oswald, who I was pretty familiar with thanks to Marina and Lee, it was still pretty interesting to get his perspective.

Oklahoma City Bombing

He also discusses some lesser known cases that I am guessing most people aren't familiar with; at least, I wasn't. He also delved into some types of crimes I've not seen him really address before, such as some early airplane hijacking cases and mass shooters, including those involved in work place violence. He gave some really interesting perspectives into these lesser known crimes and criminals, which really kept me hooked.

Some of the broad types of crimes covered by the book include arson, poisoning (specifically product tampering), employee violence, fugitives, and mass shootings. He also wraps up with a "you make the call" chapter that allows you to test out what you've (hopefully) learned from the book with a series of hypothetical cases, which is pretty fun.

Overall, I can recommend for any true crime buff, especially those interested in the more cerebral questions regarding the psychology of crime.

What's next for me? Stay tuned for reviews in the next few weeks of:

1. America's First Daughter
2. City of Lies
3. The Romanovs