"What drives someone to kill?" It's a question that renowned forensic nurse and criminal profiler Ann Wolbert Burgess is particularly equipped to answer (and does) in her riveting debut memoir, A Killer by Design: Murderers, Mindhunters, and My Quest to Decipher the Criminal Mind.
One of the few female trailblazers within the male-dominated halls of the FBI, Burgess was a key player in the creation of the Bureau's first criminal profiling team, the Behavioral Science Unit (BSU). In the early 1970s, Burgess's groundbreaking research into rape and sexual trauma attracted the attention of "mindhunter" FBI agents John Douglas and Robert Ressler. Soon she was called in to consult on the most difficult and extreme serial killer cases. Driven by a desire to help victims and prevent future crimes, Burgess worked alongside the FBI for two decades to identify, track down and interview dozens of the country's most violent offenders, such as the "BTK" (bind-torture-kill) killer Dennis Rader and Henry Louis Wallace, the first documented Black serial killer. The memoir includes Burgess's intimate reflections on her work and ability to process horrific acts of violence into actionable data, and reveals a pioneering spirit unafraid to buck convention and spur innovation in a traditional and male-dominated field.
Full of behind-the-scenes depictions of FBI briefing sessions and never-before-seen interview transcripts, the book sheds light on the fascinating intricacies of the profiling process and the criminal mind. A Killer by Design is a crisply written and important addition to the field of criminology. --Peggy Kurkowski, book reviewer and copywriter in Denver, Colo.