According to the blurb, John Douglas is "a man who has looked evil in the eye and made a vocation of understanding it" and that, presumably, is only in order to get ,through his everyday dealings with his bosses at the FBI's serial crime unit. But seriously - and this book is very serious indeed - Douglas is one of those earnest, well-meaning chaps who studies the bloody mess left by a serial killer and draws up a psychological profile which explains why some people kill again and again for kicks. Perhaps the same technique could be applied to readers, for the public appetite for repetitive gory detail of this kind never fails to amaze me.
