Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit

John E. Douglas · Mark Olshaker

Nov 1998 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

Now a Netflix original series

Discover the classic, behind-the-scenes chronicle of John E. Douglas’ twenty-five-year career in the FBI Investigative Support Unit, where he used psychological profiling to delve into the minds of the country’s most notorious serial killers and criminals.

In chilling detail, the legendary Mindhunter takes us behind the scenes of some of his most gruesome, fascinating, and challenging cases—and into the darkest recesses of our worst nightmares.

During his twenty-five year career with the Investigative Support Unit, Special Agent John Douglas became a legendary figure in law enforcement, pursuing some of the most notorious and sadistic serial killers of our time: the man who hunted prostitutes for sport in the woods of Alaska, the Atlanta child murderer, and Seattle's Green River killer, the case that nearly cost Douglas his life.

As the model for Jack Crawford in The Silence of the Lambs, Douglas has confronted, interviewed, and studied scores of serial killers and assassins, including Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, and Ed Gein, who dressed himself in his victims' peeled skin. Using his uncanny ability to become both predator and prey, Douglas examines each crime scene, reliving both the killer's and the victim's actions in his mind, creating their profiles, describing their habits, and predicting their next moves.

Ratings and reviews

I thought the book was going to focus more on the actual art of criminal profiling. I couldn't go on after a few chapters--it's just a bunch of bragging about how cool the author is and some of his war stories from his glory days at the fbi. Who cares? Get to the good stuff!

Read this book many years ago and loved it... really sticks with you! Superb writing! I give thanks every day for people like Mr. Douglas - men & women out there to protect us at all costs (and sometimes those costs are unbelievably high!). While these cases have fascinated me for decades, I know I could never deal with the evil that our world sometimes creates.

A really great book yet also very depressing and upsetting. It's amazing to see how the FBI grew in leaps and bounds to understand the mindset and background of a killer. Being a husband, son, and father it's crazy think such violence exists is such a random nature in our world. I am glad that the work the behavioural Science unit has done has forever changed how murder and other crimes are handled

About the author

John Douglas is the legendary FBI criminal profiler and former Chief of the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Unit where he researched, investigated, and conducted interviews of some of America’s most violent criminals. Over the past half-century, he either directly worked on or had overall supervision in over 5,000 violent crime cases. He is one of the foremost experts of the criminal mind, its methods, and motivations. Douglas is a veteran of the United States Air Force and holds a doctorate degree in Education, and lives with his wife, Pamela, in the Washington, DC, area.



Mark Olshaker is an Emmy Award–winning documentary filmmaker and author of thirteen nonfiction books and five novels, including Einstein’s Brain and The Edge. His books with former FBI Special Agent and criminal profiling pioneer John Douglas, beginning with Mindhunter and most recently When a Killer Calls, have sold millions of copies and have been translated into many languages. Mindhunter was recently adapted by David Fincher into a critically acclaimed and award-winning dramatic series on Netflix. Olshaker and his wife, Carolyn, an attorney, live in the Washington, DC, area.