This is something quite different from the blog tours that I normally take part in. It’s not often that I read non-fiction, but true-crime is something that for some unknown reason, fascinates me. I know that many people are drawn to the subject matter, for various reasons. So when Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers offered this opportunity, I jumped at the chance!
Blurb:
In Talking With Psychopaths, bestselling author and criminologist Christopher Berry-Dee takes readers deep inside the dark minds of some of the most pitiless and dangerous people alive.
Having spent years interviewing imprisoned criminals – including notorious serial killers – he discovered that the lack of remorse these people showed was in many ways even more terrifying than the crimes they had committed. Yet in the course of these conversations, the author also had the chance to interview his subjects’ psychiatrists and, in doing so, uncovered a terrible truth: a monster can be hidden behind a friendly face.
Some of these experts, he found, proved to have more in common with their patients than he would ever have expected. This book examines horrific crimes committed by some of the most remorseless and merciless people ever to have lived. If it reveals a mindset wholly alien to most people, it also, shockingly, demonstrates that some of the people who treat these psychopaths have their own demons.
This chilling study of darkest of criminal minds will inevitably shift the reader’s view of psychopaths, and in doing so, reveals that horror can be much closer to us than we think.
My Review:
For lovers of all things ‘true crime’ (like me), it’s always particularly interesting to discover the intricate workings of the mind of a murderer. In this book the author spends time focusing not only on these psychopaths themselves, but also on those who have dedicated their lives to working with them, and I found this to be quite the eye-opener! It seems that these individuals often have some level of darkness within themselves, and it can get dangerously deep!
He often refers to ‘the abyss’, which I had actually come across in a book I read recently called ‘Catch Me a Killer’. This was written by Micki Pistorius, who was South Africa’s first forensic profiler of serial killers. It’s a concept that those who work with the most deadly, the most brutal psychopaths and sociopaths are warned about. They know that the work they do every day has them teetering at the edge and that it is just waiting to reach out and pull them in. It’s up to them to know their boundaries.
The cases that Berry-Dee covers in this book are some of the worst and most depraved ever committed. However, this is extremely fact-based, unlike many other books in this genre that also give background and lean towards telling the story of the crime that happened, what may have led to it, and then following up with the outcome. Here, we read information about the individual who committed the crime and get a bit of a character study on them based on the author’s assessment. He actually managed to spend one-on-one time with some of these murderers, which I found chilling.
This is by no means a light book. So if you have what’s referred to as ‘fan-attraction’ to true-crime, then I’d suggest this probably isn’t for you. But if you’re interested in the technical, nitty-gritty facts, then this is definitely going to be up your alley. The author does refer a lot to his restricted word-count (I’m not sure what that’s about), but that doesn’t detract from the the complex details that are covered here. It’s not exactly a book you read before going to bed! It’s excellent research material though.
Thank you to Compulsive Readers for this very different and interesting blog tour.
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