Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

This was a fascinating look into the world of criminal profiling and how it has evolved through time. We start with a study of some of the trappings of psychology and the case of Jack The Ripper. This slowly meanders through to Sherlock Holmes and the concept of looking at someone to understand their propensity for crime or violence, until we move closer to the modern era.

All the case files in this book are well researched, although perhaps not as well expanded as they could have been. The real talent of the author lies in the way that all the cases are connected and flow into each other- it makes for really compulsive reading.

The way that we get a personal connection and an explanation of true crime and why we have such a fixation with it was also really good, and it made it clear what the intention of the book was. Most importantly I learnt some bits and pieces that I wasn’t aware of before, which I always see as the most important thing in a non-fiction book.

I was very excited to receive this ARC, as someone who really enjoys reading about profiling and other kinds of criminal investigation. The author made it clear in her authors note that this is a very personal book for her, which I really respect. I think this was very well written, and you can tell the author did a lot of research. However, I felt like this book really didn’t accomplish what it set out to do. Some of the cases didn’t seem like they were a good representation of what profiling can do and how it has impacted people- for example the Ted Bundy chapter felt like it was more about Dorothy Lewis’s struggle to understand Ted’s mind than about profiling. I felt like this book had a lot of potential but didn’t quite deliver on its premise.

When I first started reading this book, I felt a little hesitant--at times, the writing was a bit juvenile; more like a paper someone wrote for a class in college. I wasn't sure how informative/accurate it would be, or if I would recommend it to people who enjoy true crime. But as I kept reading, the writing style steadily grew on me. Rather than juvenile, I began to see it as accessible. Corbett does a wonderful job tracing the progression of our obsession with finding physical or mental or emotional markers of criminality. Every step of the way, the path paved with good intentions just leads to confirmations of our own bigotry and prejudice. I would consider this recommended reading for anyone who is interested in true crime. Not just because the history of profiling is fascinating, but because it's important to remember that even the most cutting-edge innovations in forensics are fallible. There is not much that separates the phrenologists of the past from the algorithm-led "Intelligent Policing" of today. As a true crime fan myself, I believe that it's important to think critically about how we prosecute crime and how forensic techniques are employed. It's easy to fall into the fantasy of "Good Guys Who Are Always Good Arrest Bad Guy Who Is Always Bad", but the truth is more complex and tragic.

By the end of the book, I was fully on-board with recommending this to my true crime book club. My only gripe is that the epilogue seems a bit short--it ends very abruptly. I would've liked more of an overview that tied the entire book together and made it clear what the author hopes she'll accomplish by writing this book. It felt like there should have been more of a 'call to action' to end the book but there wasn't.

The Monsters We Make is a brilliantly written book that takes, a sometimes daunting topic, and makes it accessible for any reader who has an interest in true crime and those who solve them. The style of writing was so fluid and well thought out, with each chapter blending seamlessly into the next, linking the subjects perfectly. I really, really enjoyed it and would recommend it highly! Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to read it!

I enjoyed the book, I read a lot of true crime, there was quite a mixture of different case studies covered. The author offers some personal insight into one of the cases due to a personal link. This was interesting however most of the other cases did not offer anything new in terms of research or insight. I would recommend this, for those who read within this genre.

A readable jog through the origins of criminal profiling up to the modern day, with examples from the 21st century of profiling being taken too far.
The book starts with the author’s personal experience of contact with a killer, but being completely unaware they had the capacity to kill. This raises the question about what a killer look like would or how might they act so as to spot them… a question that has troubled a lot of people throughout time.
The Victorians thought they had the answer with phrenology (the study of the bumps on the human skull.) A logical idea…albeit wrong. The example of Jack the Ripper is then given, and how Arthur Conan-Doyle was invited (some years later) to use his powers of deduction from fiction writing, to profile Jack. It appears he was hopelessly adrift from the suspect who was most likely to have committed the crimes.
Other cases studies include Ted Bundy and the UNAbomber. Again, each example advances the science of criminal profiling with advances in knowledge as it was known at the time. And therein lies the twist – without wishing to add spoilers – it seems that the advancement of profiling depended on experiments which manipulated the psyche of ‘volunteer’ students…which may have had fatal consequences. (Read the book to find out why!)
And finally, there is a fascinating review of profiling and how it got a bad name. Again, in part this harks back to the early Victorian policing methods of being visible as a way preventing crime. In the 21st century this meant identifying those ‘at risk of offending’ and then intimidating them.
A fascinating, readable book of interest to anyone who enjoys true crime, lay psychology, or the history of crime.

Criminal profiling: what's it good for? Rachel Corbett takes a stab at it (I'll see myself out) and comes away with a book that is an easy read, informative, but also a little light.

Corbett starts off by talking about a personal situation which led her down the path of crime investigating. What follows is mostly vignettes on various type of profiling including Jack the Ripper, Hitler, and the Unabomber. Along the way, Corbett muses about whether profiling is the powerful tool to crime solving that is often presented or just a few steps above fortune telling.

The book is highly readable. I flew through it, and if you are unsure about the genre of true crime, this is a wonderful primer. For true crime junkies, you might be left wanting more. These vignettes are very high level and I finished with a lot of questions I would have wanted answered. The last couple chapters ask some very large questions about current police tactics without in-depth analysis. Ironically, it is Corbett's skillful writing which left me wanting to hear much more. Either way, you will like what is here, and this may be a gateway to other books on the subjects she brings up.

(This book was provided as an advance copy by NetGalley and W. W. Norton and Company.)

In her upcoming 2025 book *The Monsters We Make* (*Murder, Obsession, and the Rise of Criminal Profiling*) published by W.W. Norton & Company, journalist Rachel Corbett relays her haunting obsession with a decades-old murder-suicide in Iowa. The twist is, it's personal. One of Corbett's mother's ex-boyfriends, Scott Johnson, in 1993 shot another one of his girlfriends in the head before turning the gun on himself in an unexplained bout of violence, leaving the dry suicide note of "Give my cat to my dad". Having grown up thinking her former on-and-off again father figure had merely committed suicide, Corbett became tormented following her discovery of the news article implicating Johnson in the "open and shut" murder case, and she felt the call as many humans do to unearth the "why" behind the trauma.

People are obsessed with crime because of the comfort-inducing "urge to identify physical manifestations of evil". Yet the 20th Century brought about new levels of horrors in terms of how we viewed criminals, televising bumbling banal Nazi war criminals and suave, handsome "would let your daughter date him" serial killers like Ted Bundy, who forced a societal shift in the nature of those we would call criminals.

Despite the mass popularity of television shows like *Criminal Minds* and *Mindhunter*, Corbett goes as far to label profiling "a quixotic, haphazard blend of science and fiction", questioning both its statistical and moral efficacy, and pointing out cases where correct profiling appears to have been doctored or placed retroactively for media attention.

*But does it matter if these stories are largely fictional? Society needs monsters. They remind us of who we are- and who we are not. They are terrifying because they break down the boundaries between what we consider human and inhuman, and warn us of what we could become.*

While the introduction started off emotional and pensive, the bold and interesting premises that Corbett leads with sharply pivot into a series of investigative vignettes featuring a slideshow of offenders loosely associated to the history of criminal profiling, from Jack the Ripper's reign of terror in Victorian London up to the modern-day Big Brother "Intelligence-Led Policing" of Pasco County Sheriff's Office in Florida which has targeted and harassed "at risk" families for almost a decade with minimal repercussions.

Corbett comes up short in connecting the links of profiling's murky history yet *The Monsters We Make* still profiles as an entertaining read for true crime junkies, although those who have read exhaustively on characters like the Ripper, Bundy, and Kaczynski may require a few more threads of scarlet to whet their appetites.

This is a book full of heart and insight. It's an important reminder that the context around crimes is an important consideration when evaluating them, and also that crimes affect ripples of people around them.

This book is a gripping, thoughtful deep dive into the strange and often murky history of criminal profiling. Rather than glamorizing it, the author picks apart six pivotal cases—from Jack the Ripper to modern predictive policing—to show how profiling evolved from educated guesswork into something almost mythical in the public imagination. What struck me most is how she draws out the tension between science, instinct, and power, and how easily those lines blur. It’s not just a true crime book—it’s a look at how we try to understand evil, and what that says about us.

A very interesting and eye opening read. Some shocking characters and experiments. Would definitely recommend reading this book.

The author weaves her personal connection to a murderer into a broader exploration of criminal profiling. From the thematic apperception test to contemporary investigative methods, it offers a compelling and eye-opening look at how we seek to understand the minds of killers.