The Alienist
I just finished a book that reminded me of Criminal Minds. The Alienist, by Caleb Carr, is a fictional story of one of the earliest attempts at criminal profiling. The story involves a killer who targets young boy prostitutes in New York City in 1896. The Police Commissioner (who happens to be Theodore Roosevelt) assigns the case covertly to an Alienist friend of his, Doctor Kreizler. An alienist used to be the term for a psychologist or psychiatrist.
Anyway, they assemble a team made up of a NY Times journalist, a police headquarters secretary, and two detectives to solve the case. It was interesting though because the thought that they could look at the victims and the crimes and determine what type of person killed these boys was absurd in that time. Now, a special, elite unit of the FBI is devoted to doing just that. In the book, the team goes through many of the same things the BAU does in Criminal Minds - they discuss the case, hypothesize, and find out more and more informaiton about the man responsible.
(Wikipedia has a summary of the book.)
It was interesting to see how much investigation of crimes have changed, and yet some things still are the same. Garcia could have come in handy several times in the book - they had to travel to distant cities to look up records (yes, paper records) that could be easily done now on computer. Yet, they still manage to find this person, who they had no phsyical evidence from. It’s an interesting book, and if you’re bored with reruns and looking for something to do before the new shows, check it out. (Warning: it’s a little slow in the beginning, but it does pick up.)
March 9th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
KATIE THAT SOUNDS LIKE A GOOD BOOK. When did the FBI start the criminal profiling? MY STUDENTS AT SCHOOL WANT TO KNOW WHAT KIND OF EDUCATION THEY WOULD NEED TO BE A PROFILER–IT LOOKS SO GLAMOROUS
?? ANY IDEAS? THANKS