Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.
Mindhunter  By  cover art

Mindhunter

By: John E. Douglas,Mark Olshaker
Narrated by: Richard M. Davidson
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $22.49

Buy for $22.49

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.

Publisher's summary

Bonus material! Includes an excerpt from John Douglas and Mark Olshaker’s Obsession!

Discover the classic behind-the-scenes chronicle of John E. Douglas' 25-year career in the FBI Investigative Support Unit, where he used psychological profiling to delve into the minds of the country's most notorious serial killers and criminals - the basis for the upcoming Netflix original series.

In chilling detail, the legendary Mindhunter takes us behind the scenes of some of his most gruesome, fascinating, and challenging cases - and into the darkest recesses of our worst nightmares.

During his 25-year career with the Investigative Support Unit, Special Agent John Douglas became a legendary figure in law enforcement, pursuing some of the most notorious and sadistic serial killers of our time: the man who hunted prostitutes for sport in the woods of Alaska, the Atlanta child murderer, and Seattle's Green River killer, the case that nearly cost Douglas his life.

As the model for Jack Crawford in The Silence of the Lambs, Douglas has confronted, interviewed, and studied scores of serial killers and assassins, including Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, and Ed Gein, who dressed himself in his victims' peeled skin. Using his uncanny ability to become both predator and prey, Douglas examines each crime scene, reliving both the killer's and the victim's actions in his mind, creating their profiles, describing their habits, and predicting their next moves.

©2017 John E. Douglas & Mark Olshaker (P)2017 Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Featured Article: The Best True Crime Audiobooks for Your Inner Detective


The best true crime audiobooks will have you on the edge of your seat—whether the story divulges details about well-known serial killers or unidentified villains of unsolved crimes. You won’t be able to stop listening as each mystery unravels, especially when these fascinating, gripping tales are read by some of the most captivating voices in audio. Here are the best true crime audiobooks to get your heart racing.

What listeners say about Mindhunter

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    6,822
  • 4 Stars
    1,674
  • 3 Stars
    491
  • 2 Stars
    115
  • 1 Stars
    86
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    6,020
  • 4 Stars
    1,392
  • 3 Stars
    451
  • 2 Stars
    118
  • 1 Stars
    87
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    6,001
  • 4 Stars
    1,419
  • 3 Stars
    431
  • 2 Stars
    102
  • 1 Stars
    87

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

I have purchased every book J.E.D. Has made available

And this one by far was the most interesting to me in terms of cases. One thing about his books , he always takes the first 3 chapters or so ( about 2 hours), talking about his background that gets tedious and I’ll be honest, I usually skip those chapters. This one is no different and even with the loss of the first hour or so, I would still recommend this for the really , juicy, detailed and interesting cases that after his initial bio , seems to be back to back for the next ten hours.
Great book, I’m hard to please and I really liked this one a lot.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

203 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Too much ego

I find profiling very interesting and I love this kind of book. John Douglas has been my favorite author, but his ego is too much on display throughout his books, and especially in this one. I have been waiting for this one because Audible only has the abridged version until recently. I was so excited to read his “best” book, but now that I’ve finished, I think it might have been better to go with the abridged version. If you cut out all the unimportant flattery of himself, the book would only be a 1/3 as long. I would recommend his other books The Anatomy of Motive or The Cases That Haunt us. He discusses mainly the same cases, usually in more detail, and I feel they are more interesting without so many me’s and I’s.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

199 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Great book, but you need the stomach for it

This is a great book, but it'll be my last book of serial murder books. The graphic details needed to explain the profiling is really disturbing. I don't know how these investigators keep their sanity.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

113 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Interesting but distractingly self-congratulatory

John Douglas writes of his part in the establishment of the behavioral analysis unit focused on criminal profiling at the FBI, and while much of it is compelling it is at tones obscured by Douglas' ego. It's clear that all but two is the cases presented in this book are depicted as total success stories. His profiles are always perfect, or if not perfect the only details he misses are trivial, and he always rides in on his white horse to save the day. Whether the facts are fudged to depict him in a perfect light or he cherry picked cases, it's hard to know, but my take on this is confirmed by the cases he presents on crimes that were unsolved at the time of his writing. In the case of the Green River Killer, his profile turns out to be mostly accurate but he asserts that he believes the series of murders are probably committed by three different killers. This is most certainly a theory he would've omitted had Gary Ridgeway been caught at the time he wrote the book. I say this because erroneous predictions like this were completely absent in the other cases he presented, and it's pretty obvious that profiling is not an exact science. There are similar features to his presentation of the BTK case, which was also unsolved at the time. All this is to say I think he's an extremely talented guy, but his pretense that he was always perfect takes away from this book in my opinion. Of course he wasn't always right on the money. Of course certain things came to light after the criminal was caught that turned out to be counter to the prediction.
Anyway, the book is fascinating but the presentation of Douglas as a knight in shining armor takes away from the overall quality of it.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

85 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

LOVED -- was amazing BUT

Okay so this book is great if you start at Ch 5. - Literally chapters 1-4 are him kissing his whole ass, the ENTIRE time. I was great as sports, I screwed this girl, I was like top student of the year.. WHO CARES... TALK ABOUT SOMETHING OTHER THAN YOU!!! Though once he got off his high horse, the book was amazing..... great insight and views on cases.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

80 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Narration silly

Narrator decision to use clipped, staccato rhythms to sound like a bad TV cop was distracting and took away from the story. Unfortunate choice.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

50 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Good, not great

Half the book is spent on self-congratulation and feeding the author's ego in the form of a tedious autobiography. The other half of the book is good.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

43 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

The Worst Job in America

We as a society really owe a huge debt of gratitude to all the agents who have the mental fortitude to hunt down dangerous psychopaths and retain enough composure to build a legal case against them instead of just taking the law into their own hands like I would of!

A bigger thanks goes to John Douglas and his colleagues for pioneering the ground breaking techniques that lead to the creation of the Behavioral Science unit, where profiling the killers personality helped narrow down the many suspects and leads detectives had to sift through. Time and time again detectives of the day were amazed at the accuracy of these profiles and the book shows how Douglas and Co. rapidly changed law enforcements attitudes towards these techniques which now have become part of their standard training.

Douglas does not pull any punches and lets it be known that he is pro capital punishment for these psychopaths and he shows no love for the Psychiatry industry that has released many psychotics with a history of violence back into society.
Richard M. Davidson's voice and approach were perfect for this book, sort of a toned down R.C. Bray.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

37 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

He should analyze himself...

This starts as a cool story about the start of the fbi’s behavioral profile unit, but devolves first into a disjointed collection of stories in which the author is always miraculously right and everyone else is stupidly wrong; it later further devolves into a meandering diatribe into a whole slew of issues such as the death penalty, the righteousness of revenge, how schools should work, feel-good psychologists, the state of society, and other issues. In the end, it settles into a justification of the author’s failings in life and an inflation of his sense of self-importance. ...or perhaps to satiate his sense of inadequacy... Throughout it all, his sense of smugness and self-righteousness pervade the book. He judges others, glosses over his failings, boosts himself and inserts his long-form resume and list of accomplishments (the last ten or so minutes sounded like a job interview), and generally spouts high-minded declarations in areas in which he admits he’s not formally trained, all the while condescending to the reader. I’m sure there’s a good story here, but this book doesn’t tell it. It’s simply the author’s attempt to set their own legacy and make themselves sound as good as possible. By the end, I was constantly rolling my eyes, openly calling the author a pompous jackass, and sighing as the book ended in typical old-man whining, “I’m so important,” “society this and that,” “get off my lawn” garbage. The men and women of the FBI that I know deserve a better book than this.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

34 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Some interesting stories, but...

Is there anything you would change about this book?

Change the narrator and get a better editor

Would you be willing to try another one of Richard M. Davidson’s performances?

Absolutely not. This guys weird cadence and 1950's cop show delivery made an already self aggrandizing story even harder to take.

Was Mindhunter worth the listening time?

No. watch the Netflix show. It's all there - almost word for word.

Any additional comments?

The first 20% is just a self aggrandizing Biography of John Douglas. I didn't but the book to learn about him, I bout it to learn about the "FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit."
it never really gets into the formation of the unit, just goes from his stories to some cases.
It's like listening to stories told by you sad old divorced uncle.
While he throws out a bunch of names to show like he shares the glory, it's obvious that he thinks he is a one man show...

And the narrator is horrible - he makes the stories unbearable.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

31 people found this helpful