The Killer Across the Table: Unlocking the Secrets of Serial Killers and Predators with the FBI's Original Mindhunter

Retired FBI criminal profiler John E. Douglas — the real-life inspiration for Netflix's Mindhunter — teams again with writer Mark Olshaker for a close study of four of the country's most disturbing predatory killers. Rather than retracing the crimes themselves, Douglas focuses on what his one-on-one interviews and interrogation strategy revealed about how each man thought, planned and justified his violence.

Drawing on decades in the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico, Douglas walks through the profiling techniques he developed and used directly on notorious offenders including Charles Manson, David Berkowitz ("Son of Sam") and Dennis Rader (BTK), explaining how reading a killer's psychology in person differs from reconstructing it from a crime scene. The book pairs case history with practical insight into interview strategy, making the criminal mind — not just the crime — the subject.

Published in 2019, The Killer Across the Table extends the ground Douglas and Olshaker covered in Mindhunter, aimed at readers of true crime and criminal psychology who want to understand the reasoning behind predatory violence rather than a blow-by-blow account of it.