The Profiler

My Life Hunting Serial Killers and Psychopaths

By: Pat Brown, Bob A. Andelman

Narrated by: Pat Brown

In 1990, a young woman was strangled on a jogging path near the home of Pat Brown and her family. Brown suspected the young man who was renting a room in her house, and quickly uncovered strong evidence that pointed to him - but the police dismissed her as merely a housewife with an overactive imagination. It would be six years before her former boarder would be brought in for questioning, but the night Brown took action to solve the murder was the beginning of her life's work.

Pat Brown is now one of the nation's few female criminal profilers - a sleuth who assists police departments and victims' families by analyzing both physical and behavioral evidence to make the most scientific determination possible about who committed a crime. Brown has analyzed many dozens of seemingly hopeless cases and brought new investigative avenues to light.

In The Profiler, Brown opens her case files to take listeners behind the scenes of bizarre sex crimes, domestic murders, and mysterious deaths, going face-to-face with killers, rapists, and brutalized victims. It's a rare, up-close, first-person look at the real world of police and profilers as they investigate crimes - the good and bad, the cover-ups and the successes.

©2010 Pat Brown (P)2010 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Pat Brown takes us into the very minds of cold-blooded killers. Most people can't comprehend the `why' behind murder. Pat, utilizing her background as one of the country's leading criminal profilers, coaches the reader as to how a killer thinks, reacts, and kills! Incredible!" (Nancy Grace, host of Nancy Grace on HLN)

Violent Cases

Pat Brown speaks of actual killers and vague law enforcement. Interesting even if I'm not always the conclusion of Profiler in a case.

bad read

While I enjoyed her stories and the fact that she's a smart lady, she should never have narrated the book herself. She has no dramatic flare in her voice and it's flat and dull. They also did not edit out her mistakes. Meaning: there were a number of times she botched a line, stopped, and began reading from the top. I thought my ipod was screwy the first few times it happened. Besides that it may be a better book to read than listen to.

Pat Brown, Please hire a professional to Narrate.

It is an interesting read, but maybe the book version would be better because Pat Brown does a bad job of narrating it. When I first heard it I thought, "This cannot be a professional narrator, it's probably the author. WHY? Why do you guys do this?"

Long pauses and the same voice for each character make it a rather tedious listen.

SPOILER ALERT START

I have to ask, were there ANY cases where they prosecuted the killer. Understandably this is about profiling and not prosecution but with all the conjecture and theories you get... nothing. Just one case, one. One. One would have been ok, but I would probably then complain 'Only one?'

Besides, this doesn't tell us what makes the serial killers tick. For me it wasn't just prurient interest as in the What they did, but more about the Why. Along those lines I hope Audible will have the books by Dr. Dorothy Otnow Lewis and Dr. Jonathan Pincus some day.

SPOILER ALERT END

It's unfortunate that this book in the end appears to be a memoir of the author--"My Life Hunting Serial Killers and Psychopaths and That's All". If you want to know the WHY as opposed to just the What, then this is not the book for you.

I would give one star but it does have interesting tales and information so it gets two stars.

unbalanced but interesting

Is there anything you would change about this book?

The focus is heavily on failures, but overall, the anecdotes are interesting. Readers must ask why the author doesn't include more cases that were successfully prosecuted.

What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)

The author's rationale for this branch of forensic science is satisfying, underlining the fact that most murders are committed by people who know their victims. If more investigators understood this fact, more murders would be solved. To some extent, Brown indicts law enforcement as inept in collecting, storing, and producing for trial the necessary evidence. Justice is lost somewhere between the crime event and the identification of the perpetrator.

What three words best describe Pat Brown’s performance?

Personal, sobering, revealing.

What else would you have wanted to know about Pat Brown and Bob A. Andelman ’s life?

I would like to know more about Brown's training.

Any additional comments?

This is different from John Douglas's books, in which he tells only about the Bureau's successes. I enjoyed his books, but readers wouldn't guess from reading them that there were any unsolved cases left.

Amazing...ly BAD!

Where to start?! Oh I know...I LOATHE THIS WOMAN! More of a know-it-all, conceded, snobby bitch I have never seen, despite having very little reason for being so. The sad part is that she took an interesting topic, a great story from her personal life & an opportunity to simply sit and simply tell tales of what she has seen during her "career" as a profiler and turned it into a platform to spew criticisms of every person, place or thing she has ever come in contact with. ALL schools are bad so she home schooled her kids and now they are the most amazing human beings on planet earth. Police have to pursue justice in a formal manner so she sees all cops as useless a-holes and, therefore, decides to save the world for us by amazingly teaching herself criminal profiling and striking out on her own like a superhero. A karate instructor puts on a class to help women defend themselves so, being a self-proclaimed karate master, she actually goes to the class just to belittle him in front of everyone by stating the OBVIOUS fact (to her anyway) that you CANNOT defend yourself against a sneak attack (then she proceeds to actually take over the class and shows everyone how to successfully defend against a sneak attack). She even criticizes other private investigators for treating their careers as a business and actually expecting to be paid for working their cases when they cannot guarantee that they can solve it! How she can question anyone's skills or intelligence when she allowed what I officially consider to be THE CRAZIEST PERSON EVER to move into her home and rent a room in order to keep her from having to go to work in order to home school her kids and (unfortunately I know this next part because she made it quite clear that she is brilliant for doing so) breast feed her children until 2 years old. You may wonder what that has to do with criminal profiling, but that is actually in the section in which she tells you why you are an a-hole for having your children sleep in separate beds from you and, even worse, have a life outside of their mommy and daddy. She even implies that because she did these things for her kids they are officially guaranteed a life free of rape, murder and horror (and, believe me, just as free of fun).

Here is my own twist ending: LISTEN TO THIS BOOK because the guy in the beginning is so crazy that it would be just plain funny if he weren't a murderer. Instead, hearing the stories about his antics makes you laugh to yourself while shaking your head but, trust me, they are still amazing stories to hear. The true laugh out loud part is that there is no way that someone naive enough to allow a guy like that to move in to their home as a tenant in the first place could EVER learn the common sense needed to do this job with any success. Either that or the whole field of profiling is B.S. Oh wait, she actually implies that it IS B.S. at several parts when she talks about other, REAL crimonologists like John Douglas and complains that there is NO WAY they could ever REALLY know what they say they know about individuals in their cases unless they are cheating and hiding the fact that they already knew the whole story BEFORE profiling the killers! That pretty much sums up my feelings about profiling after reading this one book on the subject so far, though I am sure this is only because SHE is an idiot. Therefore, I am on to John Douglas's Mind Hunter next to set things straight!

An Interesting Point of View

Pat Brown learned to be a profiler "sorta" by acident. She had a boarder in her home who she linked to a murder and the police just didn't take her as seriously as she thought they should. In the opening of this book she tells that story. She takes the middle part of the book to tell how she became a profilier as a result. In concluding sections she reflects on different persons and personalitites she has profiled. concludes by reflecting on different persons she has profiled. I was particularly interested in her discussion of suiside.


This is an interesting enough book though I wish it had more depth. It is just a rather shallow approach to profiling and the reader doesn't get as much insight into the process or the clients or the patterns. I suppose that is my own opinion only, but I hoped for more learning from the book. We don't even really understand what drove her to get into the profiling field - other than frustration with the police.


The major problem with this book is the reading. The author does her own reading which is fine. However, there multiple places in the text where she stops, repeats herself correcting a reading error, and then proceeds. I have dozens and dozens of Audible books and I have never gotten a book with this many errors. If you can tolerate the reading (which isn't bad otherwise) and if you just are lookinjg for an interesting easy read - this book may be for you.

Seriously frustrating read

Would you try another book from Pat Brown and Bob A. Andelman and/or Pat Brown?

I spent this whole book waiting for someone ANYONE to get justice. Never happens. It's basically a book with a woman who has a pretty inspiring story of starting down a new path later in her life but nothing else. She only seems to offer people some theories that has helped no one. She identifies killers but no one can do anything with that info. She's a hunter who has caught no one. The one interesting thing is to understand how tv has lulled us all into thinking the police will try to catch someone who victimizes us. Clearly, at least from the perspective she presents, they don't do crap to help anyone if it's even a little harder than catching someone standing over you with a smoking gun saying 'I did it.'. Overall depressing and frustrating.

Has The Profiler turned you off from other books in this genre?

No

Have you listened to any of Pat Brown’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No

This is a book you will not put down

Ms Brown has done it again with knowledge of the subject and takes you inside the mind of these monsters. I would highly recommend you get this to learn more about the serial killers and psychopaths. I look forward to reading more work by Pat Brown

bad

Wanna be Sherlock Holmes. Self "taught" profiler with no law enforcement affiliation making a bunch of assumptions and guesses with no access to the evidence. Housewife that had a mid life crisis, blew up her marriage, because she believes a person boarding at her house killed someone. Terrible.

"Profiler"

Self-taught profiler with no police agency affiliation, who is generally engaged on a "pro bono" basis by the victims families years after the fact and is rarely allowed access to the case files, and then she "profiles" the case and tells the local cops how they should have done it.
Classic case of " but she was on TV, she must be an expert."
How do I get a refund?