Book Review: When a Killer Calls: A Haunting Story of Murder, Criminal Profiling, and Justice in a Small Town by John Douglas and Mark Olshackler

Calling all blonde blue-eyed girls/women in the USA- 😬 Not sure why serial killers like to target you guys so much, but 🙌 stay strong (and do self-defense classes early!)✨ Also, avoid being only ‘outgoing’, ‘friendly’ and ‘charming’ – this seems to be the trifecta of SK appeal. ☹️

I really wish more WAS DONE to prevent so many men (and the occasional woman) from being the vile beings that attack you guys and many others. 😩

🌱THE EXCELLENT

• True Crime Biography-esque
• A dive into the history of the Behavioral Science Department (BSD) of the FBI (although not strictly relevant to the story – TO ME)
• Some insight into the psyche and actions of a few serial killers in the 70s and 80s in the USA
• Co-written by an actual FBI profiler at the time (so there are a lot of ‘bonuses’ 😍 😉)
• Great for those interested in true crime and learning about repeat killers
• 🤔 Makes you consider things like the cost of moving a trial to another county

🌱 Why it works:

~ It works because we are reading about this case, and others, from someone actually there at the time. While the impressions aren’t fresh, the view we get is good enough to understand how law enforcement in the USA may have been swamped during that time.

~ Terms are very well explained and the structure of these investigations is also made clear enough for you to understand why there may be delays or compounding factors.   

🌱 Connections:

~ True Crime Story (TCS) by Joseph Knox (2021): Where a girl disappears from her dorm during a party and is never seen again. Friends and family become suspects although nothing is really done until writers begin re-interviewing and investigating the story to identify the killer.

TCS is fictional, but in a way it presents a contrasting view to how some crimes are also solved – especially when law enforcement doesn’t jump right in.

🌱 Themes:

• ~ Family
• ~ Murder and Investigations
• ~ True Crime
• ~ Loss and Coping
• ~ The importance of teamwork

🌱 Audience:

~ Adults/mature readers (mostly because of the writing style than the content)

🌱 The Meh:

• ~ You just KNOW this asshole (the killer), killed more women than he was convicted for.
• ~ Some meandering about the ‘good old days of the agency we built’ which honestly threw me
• ~ The tragic definition of this girl that tells us little besides hair and eye colour 🤦 and being ‘outgoing’, ‘friendly’ and ‘charming’ 😬
• ~ You are reminded that some humans are just scum who shouldn’t be around 😬

🌱 Verdict:

~ If you are interested in true crime, repeat killers and serial killers and want the story from a profiler, this is a good read.

~ I would read books by these authors on other cases, hopefully we’ll spend less time with them in ‘the Boardroom’ since we already had an intro into what it was like at the time.

🌱 Quotes:

◾️ “Interestingly, (to no one but men) some Identi-Kit artists say that women and children are better at recalling and describing faces than men” 😒

✨(This comes as a shock to no woman ever🤦)

◾️ ‘I’m just fascinated with the case. It’s so weird. I wanted to see a person who could kill someone’s daughter and then call them and tell them that he feels like part of their family.”

✨(Indeed, because I was like WTF DUDE-BRO… 😒😒😒 The family held themselves together well to suck as much info from him as possible though, so kudos to them)

◾️ “…evenly divided between Black and white.”

✨(Super curious as to why the ‘white’ wasn’t also capitalized – but like, idle curiosity)

◾️ “I wasn’t apologizing to you”

(BURRNNNNNNNNN 🤣🤣🤣🤣🙌)

🎁 Thank you @netgalley for the gift.