Reviews tagging 'Medical trauma'

The Killer Across the Table by John E. Douglas, Mark Olshaker

4 reviews

laineybarbour's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative mysterious sad medium-paced

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Suicide attempt, Animal cruelty, Child abuse, Gun violence, Torture, Violence, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Medical content, Medical trauma, Murder, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, and Stalking

avidreaderandgeekgirl's review against another edition

dark informative sad medium-paced

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Violence, Toxic friendship, Sexism, Stalking, Pedophilia, Murder, Misogyny, Medical content, Medical trauma, Kidnapping, Incest, Hate crime, Homophobia, Gun violence, Emotional abuse, Drug use, Drug abuse, Domestic abuse, Death of parent, Death, Confinement, Child death, Child abuse, Alcohol, and Alcoholism

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, and Animal death

lauren_the_bookworm's review against another edition

dark medium-paced

5.0

This was a perfect true crime book for me; it went into depth about 4 cases and  each gave enough detail about the case for me to understand but not too much that I got bored. I also enjoyed the way each case was set out and particularly the interview element John Douglas is well known for. I liked that the cases weren’t particularly well known, I’d not really heard of any of them, which added interest. Definitely an interesting true crime book! 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Drug use, Medical content, Medical trauma, Murder, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, and Violence

rosenaughtin's review against another edition

dark informative sad medium-paced

3.5

I approached this book because I was a fan of the Netflix series Mindhunter, even though I don't typically reach for true crime. While it had a lot of gruesome detail and specific cases, it was mainly a meta-analysis on why the most heinous characters act the way they do. Of course, there's no exact answer to this, but Douglas does a good job of explaining how nurture and nature are both factors for sociopathic behavior and how interventions may or may not have prevented these crimes. 

The book is divided into 4 parts, each one focussing on a different killer who Douglas has interviewed, but it is interspersed with many other anecdotes and more recognizable names. I liked that he chose lesser-known murderers as his main subjects because I went in without preconceived notions of what happened. I was also impressed with Douglas' ability to empathize with his subjects in order to get a clearer picture, despite his personal disgust.

Things I didn't like so much: While Douglas showed his powers of empathy when talking about killers, he didn't always extend the same understanding to victims. I didn't like how gendered his remarks were considering victims, e.g. often describing the female victims by their attractiveness and pretty much ignoring any personal details about male victims. There was a brief quote about one murderer who abused his girlfriend, and Douglas expressed disbelief that she would have taken him back in. It bothered me that he couldn't take the time to empathize with a domestic violence survivor or understand the dynamics of gender-based violence. In general, I think he could have gone a little deeper about the social structures that are in place which lead men to more often be perpetrators and women to be victims. 

While Douglas is clearly a brilliant man who cares deeply about protecting the public from violent predators, his reverence of the FBI and Law Enforcement can get tiresome. He brushes over obvious failures of LE and the prison industrial complex even when expressing frustration over the way cases were handled. One particular distressing incident: a woman's husband and his business partner were both murdered, and the LE on site took DNA matter (seemingly unbeknownst to the woman!) from her baby, then insisted that the baby belonged to the business partner and not her husband. She vehemently denied this but was briefly thought to be involved in the murders somehow due to her infidelity. 18 ENTIRE MONTHS later, Douglas casually mentions that the blood splatters were mixed up and her husband was indeed the father of her child. WTF??? I can't imagine how traumatizing that must have been for the woman! That whole passage really rubbed me the wrong way. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Murder, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Domestic abuse, Sexual violence, Sexual assault, Misogyny, Medical trauma, Mass/school shootings, Gore, Forced institutionalization, Child death, Blood, and Animal cruelty