Product Description

'Criminals reveal who they are and where they live not just from how they commit their crimes, but also from the locations they choose.' So claims renowned criminal psychologist and profiler David Canter. Fully revised and updated, Canter's groundbreaking book leads the reader through the labyrinth psyches of serial killers, rapists and other violent criminals and takes us on the murderer's journey, in both the psychological and geographical sense. From contentious cases such as Jack the Ripper and Jill Dando, to the murders of Fred West, Canter lifts the lid on geographical profiling and how this new approach to solving crime is changing the way police work and our understanding of the criminal mind.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #65264 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

From the Back Cover
‘Horrifying, yet enthralling’ New Scientist
‘David Canter is the most eminent guide one could wish for in this difficult and serious subject’ Brian Masters, author of Killing for Company and She Must Have Known
Criminals reveal who they are and where they live not just from how they commit their crimes, but also from the locations they choose.
This is the claim of renowned criminal psychologist and profiler David Canter. In this groundbreaking book, now fully revised and updated, Canter leads us into the labyrinthine psyche of serial killers, rapists and other violent criminals, and reveals how geographical profiling is changing the way police work and our understanding of the criminal mind.
From Jack the Ripper to Fred West’s house of horror and the recent Suffolk murders, Canter analyses the geographical maps of killers’ actions and the psychological maps of their thoughts to provide a fascinating insight into the most notorious criminals of all time.
David Canter is the UK’s leading pioneer of criminal psychological profiling. His book, Criminal Shadows, won the Golden Dagger Award for crime non-fiction.

About the Author
David Canter is the UK's leading pioneer of criminal profiling and winner of the Golden Dagger Award for his book Criminal Shadows. He is professor of Psychology and Director of the Centre for Investigative Psychology at the University of Liverpool.

Customer Reviews

Putting crime in its place.
An intriguing book, translating the more widely known (or mythologised) role of the profiler into a consideration of the effects geography and place have on crime. Most burglars, we learn, rarely travel more than a short distance from their own homes.

Canter offers a stimulating insight into the way we all perceive the environment in which we live. There are places in which we feel safe, places in which we feel decidedly out of place. The same is true for anyone intent on the commission of a crime. You want to be somewhere you won't be noticed, somewhere you feel comfortable, somewhere you know your way around.

Canter goes a long way towards demystifying crime - criminals are not supermen, they are not master minds, nor are they so evil as to be instantly recognised. The vast majority of criminals (and I speak as a Probation Officer) are very ordinary individuals indeed. Profiling of criminals need not only apply to headline crimes - it can apply to the ordinary crimes committed by ordinary offenders, and can therefore offer clues to prevention, detection, and correction or rehabilitation.

Canter compares and contrasts classic failures in investigation - the false assumptions made about the Washington Sniper, the failure to catch Jill Dando's killer, the way Fred West created a 'normal' world for himself in his prison journals in contrast to the chaotic, murderous one in which he lived.

Canter had considerable success helping profile and catch the 'Railway Rapist' in England. He highlights the manner in which a criminal will begin with unplanned, opportunistic crimes, slowly elaborating upon his/her successes, becoming more sophisticated if not caught, learning how to plan and visualise, etc. The early crime is committed close to home or close to somewhere familiar to the offender; thereafter, it can be planned further and further from home.

A fascinating read, not always convincing - as when he claims to have identified Jack the Ripper - but with a vast amount of stimulating argument and analysis. An invaluable book for any serving police officer, for anyone involved in the crime and criminology field, or for crime writers.

Like a padded-out article with little to no real analysis
I picked this up second hand in Thailand while travelling for a few months. With a passing interest in real life crime, mainly the detective work involved, I bought it. My wife (a university lecturer herself) read it first and said it was very short on actual analysis and overall it was very disappointing. Since she has little interest in this sort of thing, I put her review down to that. Unfortunately she was quite right - this is an unnecessarily long, disjointed, poorly written and erratic book which will be of little interest to most people with an interest in criminology etc.

Amazingly, geographic profiling is hardly dealt with in terms of applying it to the actual murders/kidnappings/rapes reviewed. On most occasions Canter tells us about the case at hand, throws in a few details about a similar case and then concludes by saying (usually in one line), that geographic profiling could have helped. How? Why? What is he talking about? Who knows?

The writing style is very hard work too. For instance, the chapter on Black starts by telling us about the crimes and the criminal involved. Then he takes a detour onto some other unrelated topic, before starting another chapter and repeating almost word-for-word the opening gambit. This happens throughout - the case being "analysed" (and I use that word loosely) is suddenly abandoned for some other issue, and it's never anything related to geographical profiling. It's often interesting I will admit, eg the relevance of bodily mutilation, psychological profiling, the characteristics of criminals etc, but that is not what the book professes to be about. A whole chapter is devoted to how Jill Dando's fame obscured the polic investigation - interesting though that might be, isn't it in the wrong book?

Furthermore, the level of knowledge Canter has about each case is also wildly divergent. The best chapter is probably the one dealing with the NZ rapist - he was obviously privy to a lot of information about the case. But other cases are explained with scant facts almost as if the reader should know all the background.

One last peeve - why all the chapters? The NZ case is broken into 2 chapters but there is no reason for this whatsoever. The second chapter is no different in style or tone to the first - it could all have been one chapter. The West murders get at least 3 chapters, most of which deal with Fred's diary (no geographic profiling there). What was wrong with a single chapter on this one case? It's a small niggle but it just adds to the frustration reading the book.

The book is not all bad of course - some of the chapters are enlightening, but almost as if by accident. The issue of geographic profiling is barely addressed in practice and what I did learn - that the first rape/attack is often very close to the offender's home as it is impulsive and that someone like Sutcliffe or Black use their transport to move around and commit crimes - seem like commonsense, not science, to me.

A must reading for police officers
I'am a police officer from India. I investigated one of the most complicated cases of serial homicides in the recent history in India successfully. The murders came to be known as 'Stoneman mureders'. I wish I had read 'Mapping Murder' in 1999 before I handled the Stoneman murders. I particularly liked the many practical tips that Canter provides to active police professionals like me. I wish academicians display such a practical and simple approach in sharing ideas with Police Officers so that their ideas help in skill-upgradation of the police.The book is a must for police officers and detectives actively engaged in investigating serious crimes. Kindly convey my compliments to Canter for such a useful book.